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RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 



FINAL REPORTS OF THE COMMITTEE ON 

THE WAR AND THE RELIGIOUS 

OUTLOOK 

Religion among American Men. (Ready.) 

The Missionary Outlook in the Light of the War. (In 

press.) 
The Church and Industrial Reconstruction. 

The Teaching Work of the Church in the Light of the 
Present Situation. 

The Effect of the War on the Local Church, 

Principles of Christian Unity in the Light of the War. 



RELIGION AMONG 
AMERICAN MEN 



As Revealed by a Study of 
Conditions in the Army 



THE COMMITTEE ON THE WAR 
AND THE RELIGIOUS OUTLOOK 



ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York: 347 Madison Avenue 
1920 




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Copyright, 1920, by 
William Adams Brown 



Ml\H I 7 JO20 



g)Cl.A565257 



EDITORIAL PREFACE 

/. The Committee on the War and the Religious Out- 
look and Its Work. 

This volume is one of a series of studies that is being 
brought out by the Committee on the War and the Reli- 
gious Outlook. The Committee was constituted, while 
the war was still in progress, by the joint action of the 
Federal Council of the Churches of Christ in America 
and the General War-Time Commission of the Churches 
and was an expression of the conviction that the war 
had laid upon the Churches the duty of the most thorough 
self-examination. The Committee consisted of a small 
group of representative men and women of the various 
Protestant Churches appointed "to consider the state of 
religion as revealed or affected by the war, with special 
reference to the duty and opportunity of the churches, 
and to prepare these findings for submission to the 
churches." While created through the initiative of the 
Federal Council and the General War-Time Commission, 
it was given entire freedom to act according to its own 
judgment and was empowered to add to its number. 

The Committee was originally organized with Presi- 
dent Henry Churchill King as its Chairman and Pro- 
fessor William Adams Brown as Vice-Chairman. On 
account of prolonged absence in Europe, President King 
was compelled to resign the chairmanship in the spring 
of 1919 and Professor Brown became the Chairman of 
the group, with President King and Rev. Charles W. 
Gilkey as Vice-Chairmen. Rev. Samuel McCrea Cavert 
was chosen to serve as Secretary of the Committee and 
Rev. Angus Dun as Associate Secretary. 



vi EDITORIAL PREFACE 

When the Committee began its work, four main Hnes 
of inquiry suggested themselves as of chief importance : 

1. What effect has the war had upon the per- 
sonal religious experience? How far has it rein- 
forced, how far altered, the existing type of religious 
life and thought? 

2. What effect has the war had upon the organ- 
ized Christian Church? What changes, if any, are 
called for in its spirit and activities ? 

3. What effect has the war had upon Christian 
teaching? What changes, if any, are called for in its 
content or method? 

4. What effect has the war had upon the duty of 
the Church with reference to social problems of the 
time? What reconstructions are needed to make 
our social order more Christian? 

As the Committee proceeded with these inquiries, 
several distinct fields of investigation emerged and led 
the Committee to adopt the plan of bringing out a group 
of reports instead of a single volume. The present study, 
the first in a series of final reports, deals with the lessons 
that we feel have been learned from a study of religion 
in the army. Other forthcoming reports are to deal 
successively with the Missionary Outlook in th^ Light of 
the War, the Teaching Work of the Church in the Light 
of the Present Situation, the Church and Industrial Re- 
construction, the Effect of the War on the Local Church, 
and Principles of Christian Unity in the Light of the 
War. 

Earlier preliminary publications of the Committee con- 
sisted of a comprehensive bibliography on the War and 
Religion, and a series of pamphlets under the general 
heading "The Religious Outlook," in which the following 
numbers have thus far appeared : 



EDITORIAL PREFACE vii 

"The War and the ReHgious Outlook," by Dr. Robert 
E. Speer. 

"Christian Principles Essential to a New World 
Order," by President W. H. P. Faunce. 

"The Church's Message to the Nation," by Professor 
Harry Emerson Fosdick, 

"Christian Principles and Industrial Reconstruction," 
by Bishop Francis J. McConnell. 

"The Church and Religious Education," by President 
William Douglas Mackenzie. 

"The New Home Mission of the Church," by Dr. 
William P. Shriver. 

"Christian Aspects of Economic Reconstruction," by 
Professor Herbert N. Shenton. 

"The War and the Woman Point of View," by Rhoda 
E. McCulloch. 

Other numbers in the series of pamphlets are also 
under consideration. 

Our special thanks are due to Association Press, 
which has assumed responsibility for issuing the publica- 
tions of the Committee. 

11. The Present Volume. 

The data on which this report is based have been 
gleaned from many sources, of which the most important 
are the following : 

1. Replies received from approximately one hun- 
dred chaplains, Y. M. C. A. secretaries, and officers 
or privates in the army, to a questionnaire prepared 
and distributed by the Committee. These replies are 
based on observation of and contact with thousands 
of men. 

2. Extensive interviews conducted in the Ameri- 
can Expeditionary Forces by Rev. James I. Vance, 
Rev. Andrew M. Brodie, and Rev. Herbert A. Jump, 
under the general supervision of President Henry 



viii EDITORIAL PREFACE 

Churchill King during the time when he was Reli- 
gious Work Director of the Y. M. C. A. overseas. 

3. Personal conferences with chaplains, Y. M, 
C A. secretaries, and others, at the office of the 
Committee. 

4. A large number of letters received by war 
commissions and individuals from chaplains or sol- 
diers in the service. Particular mention should be 
made of the War Commission of the Episcopal 
Church, which placed at the disposal of the Com- 
mittee its extensive correspondence with Episco- 
palian chaplains on the subject of the effect of the 
war on religion. 

5. Articles in the religious press by chaplains 
and others dealing with the religious situation in the 
army or the effect of the army experience on reli- 
gious Hfe, 

6. The personal experience of members of the 
Committee and its secretaries. 

When quotations embodied in this volume are from 
confidential replies to our questionnaire or from per- 
sonal interviews, the source of the quotation is not indi- 
cated although the statements appear in quotation marks. 
When the quotation is from printed publications the 
source is generally indicated in a footnote. If anyone 
is interested in pursuing the study further, extensive 
annotated reading lists on various phases of the subject 
will be found in the bibliography on the War and Reli- 
gion, issued by the Committee.^ 

In this report there are many references to studies 
made by English chaplains, individually or collectively, 
concerning religion in the British army. It has been 
the general policy of this Committee, however, not to use 

^ "The War and Religion: A Preliminary Bibliography of Material in 
English Prior to January 1, 1919," compiled by Marion J. Bradshaw for 
the Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook. Association Press, 
1919. 136 pages. $1.50. 



EDITORIAL PREFACE ix 

this British material as a source for our conclusions. 
Quotations from it are generally placed in footnotes and 
are given for purposes of comparison rather than as 
evidence for our own point of view. It should be 
stated that the report entitled "The Army and Religion," 
prepared by a British interdenominational committee con- 
vened by Professor David S. Cairns and the Bishop of 
Winchester, did not come to our hands until after our 
own report, with the exception of the last chapter, was 
in press. 

It was originally intended that this investigation should 
deal with the navy as well as the army, but the data 
secured concerning the situation in the navy were in- 
sufficient to make generalization possible. So far, how- 
ever, as information concerning the navy was received, it 
did not seem to reflect a situation very different from that 
found in the army. 

It should also be understood that this report is based 
on inquiries made by Protestants among Protestants and 
that its conclusions, therefore, ought not to be assumed 
as necessarily valid in the case of Roman Catholics. 

The Committee is grateful to hundreds of chaplains, 
Y. M. C. A. secretaries, and officers and privates in the 
army, without whose interest and assistance it would 
have been impossible to prepare this report. We are 
particularly indebted, however, to the Rev. Professor 
Henry B. Washburn, Executive Secretary of the War 
Commission of the Episcopal Church, who accepted the 
responsibility of serving as chairman of a group which 
gave detailed criticism to the report. Among others 
whose cooperation in this way has also been of great 
assistance should be mentioned other members of the 
Committee, particularly Professor Henry B. Wright, and 
the following, who, though not members of the Commit- 
tee, have been consulted in the preparation of the volume : 
Chaplain John T. Axton, President Clarence A. Barbour, 
Right Rev. Charles H. Brent, Chaplain A. M. Brodie, 



X EDITORIAL PREFACE 

Rev. W. Stuart Cramer, Rev. Major Ralph H. Ferris, 
Col. Henry W. Hodge, Rev. Herbert A, Jump, Rev. 
Paul D. Moody, Rev. James M. Philputt, Chaplain Her- 
bert Shipman, Rev. J. A. O. Stub, Chaplain John M. 
Thomas, Rev. Gaylord S. White. The interviews con- 
ducted by Dr. Brodie, Dr. Jump, and Dr. Vance overseas 
have added much to the concreteness of our study. 

The greater part of the manuscript of the report was 
drafted by Rev. Angus Dun, Associate Secretary of the 
Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook for 
several months. His service in weighing the evidence and 
formulating conclusions has been invaluable. 

Committee on the War and the Religious Outlook 

Mrs. Fred S. Bennett. Rev. Charles S. Macfarland. 

Rev. William Adams Brown. Pres. William D. Mackenzie. 

Mabel Cratty. Dean Shailer Mathews. 

George W. Coleman. Dr. John R. Mott. 

Pres. W. H. P. Faunce. Rev. Frank Mason North. 

Prof. Harry Emerson Fosdick. Dr. Ernest C. Richardson. 

Rev. Charles W. Gilkey. Very Rev. Howard C. Robbins. 

Frederick Harris. Rt. Rev. Logan H. Roots. 

Prof. W. E. Hocking. Dr. Robert E. Speer. 

Rev. Samuel G. Inman. Rev. Anson Phelps Stokes. 

Prof. Charles M. Jacobs. Rev. James I. Vance. 

Pres. Henry Churchill King. Prof. Henry B. Washburn. 

Bishop Walter R. Lambuth. Pres. Mary E. Woolley. 

Bishop Francis J. McConnell. Prof. Henry B. Wright. 

Rev. William Adams Brown, Chairman. 
Pres. Henry Churchill King, Vice-Chairman. 
Rev. Charles W. Gilkey, Vice-Chairman. 
Rev. Samuel McCrea Cavert, Secretary. 
Rev. Angus Dun, Associate Secretary. 

105 East 22d Street, New York, N. Y. 



CONTENTS 



Editorial Preface 



Foreword. By Senior Chaplain Charles H. Brent and 
Chaplain Paul D. Moody .... 



Introduction 

1. Motives of the Study 

2. Difficulties in the Way of Study 

3. Plan of Study 



PAGE 
V 



PART I 
The State of Religion as Revealed in the Army 



CHAPTER 



The Men and Christianity 

1. The Proportion of Christians 

2. Widespread Ignorance as to the Meaning o 
Christianity and Church Membership 

3. The Fidelity of the Faithful . 



II. The Men and the Church 

1. Criticisms of the Church for Inadequacy in 
Its Moral Ideal and Moral Life . 

2. Criticisms of the Church for Unreality or 
Triviality ...... 

3. Attitude toward Denominations 

III. The Faith of the Majority 

IV. Moral Standards and Life of the Majority 

1. Virtues Generally Admired and Frequently 
Found ....... 

2. Vices or Moral .Weaknesses Frequently 
Found and Largely Condoned 

Summary of Part I 



9 

9 

14 
17 

21 
22 

25 
29 

33 

40 

43 

48 
57 



xii CONTENTS 

PART II 
The Effect of the War on Religion in the Army 

Introduction 

V. The Effect of Military Training and War on 
Personal Religion .... 

1. General Effect on Interest in Religion . 

2. The Experience of God at the Front . 

3. The Question of God's Providence 

4. The Prevalence of Fatalism . 

5. Increased Faith in Immortality 

6. Appreciation of the Meaning of the Cross 

7. Interest in the Bible .... 

8. The Demand for Reality 

VI. The Effect on the Churches and Church 
manship .... 

1. Church Unity and Cooperation 

2. Interruption of Religious Habits 

3. Public Worship 

4. Special Ministries . 

VII. The Effect on Moral Life and Standards 

1. The Effects of Army Discipline 

2. The Effect of the Group Emphasis 

3. Gambling 

4. Profanity 

5. Sexual Immorality 

6. Petty Stealing 

Summary of Part II 



PAGE 

63 



67 
69 

Id 
82 
83 
84 
87 



91 



93 

93 

100 

101 

104 

108 
108 
111 
113 
113 
114 
120 

122 



PART III 

Lessons for the Church 
VIII. What the Church May Learn from the Army 

1. Concerning Church Membership 

2. Concerning Religious Education 

3. Concerning Fundamental Teachings 

4. Concerning Public Worship . 

5. Concerning Moral Life and Standards 

6. Concerning Responsibility for the Community 

7. Concerning Church Unity . . . . 



129 
129 
131 
136 
140 
143 
149 
152 



FOREWORD 

It is always easier to theorize than it is to master all 
the facts in a situation, and to speculate on what we 
would like to think than to look the facts squarely in the 
face. It is harder still to make the correct deductions 
from evidence in hand. Such an experience as the war, 
the greatest testing period for ideals and ideas since the 
beginning of the Christian era, crowded into a few brief 
years a complete challenging of generations of convictions 
and beliefs. Such a time is bound to leave an aftermath 
of change and ruins of non-material things as great in 
their way as the ruins of the Cloth Hall at Ypres, or the 
great cathedral of Rheims. As we review some of the 
turning points of history, it seems as if the past five years 
had seen reversals or counterparts of those events packed 
into the narrow limits of a few short months. The Cru- 
sades, the fall of Constantinople, and the discovery of 
America, all these were epoch making. But Crusaders 
again have marched across the fields of Palestine, albeit 
this time in khaki, not in armor. Islam is to be no longer 
a power in Europe, having fallen as completely as Con- 
stantinople fell in 1453. And America has, as it were, 
rediscovered Europe, and having entered into some of 
Europe's problems finds the path back to her own former 
simpler insularity difficult, if not impossible. And all 
this has taken place to the dull accompaniment of the guns 
that were never silent, while in a ceaseless procession the 
best and bravest of every land marched in unbroken file 
up to the altar of sacrifice. 

In the midst of all this how fared it with the faith of 
our fathers? Among these tottering heritages of the past 
there moved men of faith, often in daily contact with men 



xiv FOREWORD 

of no faith. How fared they? What did they think and 
what did they find? As the dust of conflict settles, men 
will be more and more likely to attempt records of the 
experiences and impressions of those days. The most 
vocal will not always be the most clear-sighted and the 
ability to say things well must not be confused with the 
ability to see things clearly and see them whole. The 
lapse of time will have made it far more difficult to 
record the experiences of those days than is realized now. 
Men will honestly believe that what they record them- 
selves as having felt they really did feel at the time, and 
will lose sight of the fact that in this, as in so many other 
things, memory is colored by subsequent development or 
afiFected by the lens of time. The finer edge of vivid im- 
pression will have worn away. They will have read what 
others have said. And in these reports by others there 
will be British material, so that we shall be in danger of 
confusing our impressions of the war with the English. 
We may never know what it meant to them, for we had 
but brief months as against their years. It is also true 
that we are unconsciously influenced by what the world 
expects us to say about that which we underwent and our 
testimony becomes increasingly less valuable. 

The report which constitutes these pages is the fusing 
as far as it is possible of the impressions caught fresh, 
the redhot convictions, expressed before the uniform 
was laid aside, of men who had walked often hand in 
hand with death and for the first time in their lives 
looked daily and unafraid into the stern face of danger. 
What is recorded here is not the impression of any one 
mind, but the composite of many minds. Composites 
are rarely as satisfactory as we wish. Like the photo- 
graphs made from many negatives, they lack in sharp- 
ness of outline what they make up in their contribution 
to the conception of a type. It is easier to generalize if 
we are not hampered by too much accurate information 
on the subject or by testimony which seems to be con- 



FOREWORD XV 

flicting. And what has been done in gathering the im- 
pressions found recorded here will safeguard us in years 
to come from honest but misguided statements of the 
case for reHgion in the midst of war, or against it. 

There is one generalization, in particular, which the 
evidence in hand makes it necessary to record — the wide- 
spread ignorance on elementary religious matters even of 
those who professed to be Church members. Perhaps the 
one exception was among the Roman Catholics. Such 
a condition as revealed constitutes a grave indictment 
against the Churches. They have not been true to their 
teaching commission. It certainly calls for a careful 
revision of the pulpit message. Christian instruction is 
our first duty, and on its success depends the effectiveness 
of exhortation. 

It has been offered as an objection to this report that 
it is too gloomy, too pessimistic in tone, offering too little 
encouragement, and that it may be misleading and thus 
defeat its object. To this two things may be said. 

First, the value of such a report lies in its fidelity and 
honesty. It has not been tampered with nor colored. To 
the extent that it is true that it sounds pessimistic, it is 
a valid judgment on much present-day preaching and 
teaching of religion. We are worse than fools if we are 
to learn nothing from the war, and if men did not find 
their faith all we have a right to expect faith to be when 
shells are exploding and men dying by the thousands, we 
need not so much examine our faith itself as the form 
in which we have been expressing it and teaching it. 

And, second, this pessimism is more apparent than real. 
War throws everything out of joint. Many pray who did 
not pray before. How many continue to pray after the 
danger has passed we do not know, or with how many it 
will become a settled habit of life. On the other hand, 
there are many who, puzzled and wearied by war, cease 
to pray, at any rate with the regularity and system they 
once knew. But most, if not all, of these probably return 



xvi FOREWORD 

to a normal life in time. But, after all, when men ceased 
to pray it was for the most part because prayer had 
become more or less an external act in their lives and 
not a source of inward enlightenment and strength, an 
ornament unsuspectedly obsolete. The deterioration in 
men is always more apt to manifest itself than the im- 
provement and the man who drops prayer from his life 
is more likely to be remarked than the man who is silently 
erecting an altar in the secret places of his heart. Men 
swear out loud but for the most part they pray in secret 
— pray best, at any rate. 

St. Paul wrote to the Corinthians that the fire would 
try every man's work. While this is not the judgment of 
which St. Paul wrote, this war has tried men's work in 
the same way and the things which are overthrown seem 
for the time to be more conspicuous than the things that 
are being erected, for the process of rearing is slower 
than the processes of demolition. But some of the things 
that have gone have gone to make way for a better day. 

It is not with pessimism but with hope that we turn 
from this work of careful sifting and compiling that has 
been accomplished by the Committee on the War and 
the Religious Outlook. It gives us a deepened conviction 
of the fundamental religiousness of man, and therefore 
brings to us a new vision of the supreme importance of 
the Church's task and of its present opportunity. 

Charles H. Brent, 
Paul D. Moody, 

Headquarters Chaplains, 
American Expeditionary Forces. 



INTRODUCTION 



INTRODUCTION 

When men in large numbers began to pass from home 
life and civil occupations into the army the first impres- 
sion of the Churches was that they had something to 
"do." War commissions and parish committees, service 
flags and comfort kits, camp pastors and commissioned 
chaplains and the remarkable development of the Y. M. 
C. A. and similar agencies were the outcome of this con- 
viction. But at the same time there has been a steady, 
if less widespread, idea that in the army the Churches 
have also something to "learn." 

For the past year the religious press, and to some 
extent the secular press, have been carrying articles deal- 
ing with that something which the Churches might learn. 
But there has been the most astonishing difference of 
opinion as to what this "something" is. One holds that 
the "old Gospel" in the old language has a universal 
appeal — another, that we need a new language if not a 
new Gospel. It is argued that the Churches have failed 
— and, on the contrary, that men generally are filled with 
a Christian outlook and a Christian motive. Some point 
out that the war is teaching men the meaning of Chris- 
tianity and revealing to them the realities of religion. 
Others insist that it is brutalizing them and making irre- 
sponsible children out of vigorous and independent men. 
The debate has given voice to hope and to despair, 
strong assertion and extravagant denial. Much of what 
has been said any intelligent pastor out of his own expe- 
rience can reject at sight. Some things no man nor group 
of men can affirm or deny with confidence. But through 
it all there runs the conviction that from the army the 
Church has something to learn. 

The chief reason for the conviction that there are les- 



2 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

sons which the Church may learn from the army Hes in 
the fact that the soldier was the average man. "Before 
the war Tommy was called the man in the street" is the 
British way of expressing it.^ Perhaps the soldier 
was somewhat above the average physically. But in his 
views and attitudes and habits and motives he was surely 
typical. Within certain limits which had very little to do 
with his moral or religious situation, he was chosen by 
lot from a generation. And, as a result, what was 
gathered together was a fair cross section of American 
male humanity. 

Furthermore the minister in service had an opportunity 
to know the average man, especially the unchurched, such 
as few ministers at home have had. There is nothing 
especially cloistered about the life of a minister, but, as 
a matter of fact, birds of a feather do flock together. Men 
of Christian convictions and Christian affiliations do tend 
to congregate. And of necessity the pastor has to con- 
fine himself very largely to his own "charge." He meets 
the "man in the street" in church occasionally, occasion- 
ally at home — if he calls in the evening. He meets him 
but he does not live with him. He rarely sees him at 
work or at play. In the army the minister in service 
slept with him, ate with him, saw him at work and saw 
him in his club. "The chaplain had an opportunity such 
as almost no home minister can have of knowing the 
ordinary man and seeing with his eyes."^ "Life in an 
army cantonment gave a unique opportunity to study the 
religious interests of the nation's men."^ The Churches 
at home want to know what the minister in service 
found.* 



1 A. H. Gray, "As Tommy Sees Us." 

2 Ibid. 

' Edwin A. McAlpin, Jr., in The Presbyterian Advance. 

* Cf. the Report on Chaplains' Replies to the Lord Bishop of Kensing- 
ton. "It is felt by the Committee that the chaplains of the Navy and Army 
have special opportunities for observing the nature and character of the 
Church's influence on a large and important section of Church members, 
and are therefore in a position to supply valuable aid and counsel to the 
Committee in bringing to light our defects and failures, and indicating lines 
of improvement and reform." 



INTRODUCTION 3 

MOTIVES OF THE STUDY 

Of course the importance of the Churches' knowing the 
average man is not due to his being an authority on reli- 
gion. At times it has seemed as if those who wrote about 
him thought they had discovered a new source of revela- 
tion. This report is not based on any such idea, although 
we recognize, of course, that to not a few individual 
soldiers the experiences of war may have brought per- 
sonal revelations. For revelation we go to the Man of 
God and to men of God. We go to the soldier for self- 
knowledge and a better understanding of our task. In 
the first place, he is the product of the last twenty-five 
years of secular and religious training. His roots go 
deeper than that, but his training has taken place in that 
period. His beliefs and character, his moral and religious 
habits, pass judgment on the religious education and 
training of the years just past. In war "the world must 
live on its religious capital as on its economic capital ; and 
the outcome will test the solvency of the past decade."" 

In the second place, the soldier is typical of the men the 
Churches are trying to reach. "What he thinks about 
the state, about social questions, about education, about 
religion and the Church, is what young men generally 
think. His interests and enthusiasms are just those of 
the coming generation. Where he is wrong, the nation is 
wrong. To whatever extent he is morally sound, to that 
extent it is well with us as a people."® His mind is the 
mind we have to interest, his will is the will we have to 
win. His virtues are what we have to build upon, his 
sins what we have to overcome. 

It is important to know men as they came into the 
army. It is also important to know them as they came 
out, in so far as they were different. The experiences 
of military training and war, even the less intense ones, 
are so apart from normal life and so mingled with emo- 



^ W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time," Atlantic Monthly. 
• A. H. Gray, "As Tommy Sees Us." 



4 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

tion that they must stand out in the memories of men 
for years to come. They will be the stuflf for men's 
thinking as well as for their story telling. They will be 
a point of contact and a point of reference for all who 
would reach their minds and hearts. 

DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF STUDY 

One of the most common complaints about reports on 
the religious and moral situation in the army is that they 
are so conflicting. To some extent this is of course due 
to faulty observation and faulty reporting. Men find it 
very difficult to keep their own expectations and hopes 
out of their judgments. And every man attracts to 
himself evidence for his own viewpoint. The evangelical, 
the cynic, the sacramentarian, each finds his comrades 
responding to him. One must know the man to weigh his 
evidence. 

But the difficulties are much deeper than this. It is 
not alone the reports that are conflicting. It is the facts 
themselves. And there is every reason why that should 
be so. The 4,000,000 men who trained and served in the 
army did not have identical experiences by any means. 
Some 1,914,000 never got beyond the American training 
camps ; 696,000 reached the back areas, the S. O. S., in 
France; 1,390,000 served for longer or shorter periods in 
advanced areas. The conditions were obviously very 
different in these three areas. And the same man was 
not the same man under varying conditions. There were 
the exciting days before embarkation, the restful or pain- 
ful days in hospital, the days after the armistice filled 
with impatience and complaint, perhaps with excess. 
The whole atmosphere changed, and we have seen how 
greatly men are affected by the atmosphere around them. 
Officers differed from privates. Maine farmers differed 
from East Side immigrants. Boston Irish differed from 
southern Negroes. Kansas "drys" differed from New 
England "wets." "Different individuals would see the 



INTRODUCTION 5 

same thing in different lights. The same individual 
would find quite different conditions in different locali- 
ties." 

For every comprehensive statement there are so many 
qualifications to be added that one is often tempted to 
despair of all generalization. But it is for trustworthy 
generalizations that we must try, since it is only in broad 
outlines that we can see our problem whole. 

PLAN OF STUDY 

The subject of religion in the army falls quite naturally 
into two general divisions: (I) the state of religion as 
revealed in the army and (II) the effect of military 
training and war on religion. A very large proportion of 
the moral or religious facts evident in the army were but 
the revealing or magnifying of the situation in civil life. 
Men came into the army with certain ideas and attitudes 
and habits. The army gave them publicity. The effect 
of military training and war on religion is a distinct sub- 
ject, much more difficult and uncertain. Of course there 
are many cases where it is almost impossible to dis- 
tinguish between the religious and moral life carried into 
the war and the effects of the war in modifying that life, 
but in general the two divisions hold and are important. 

A brief third section will consider certain lessons for 
the Church suggested by the results of these inves- 
tigations. 



PART I 

THE STATE OF RELIGION AS 
REVEALED IN THE ARMY 



CHAPTER I 
THE MEN AND CHRISTIANITY 

The great majority of men in the army were nominal 
Christians. A large proportion had some slight church 
connection. The number of active, conscious Christians 
or church members was relatively small. The number of 
avowed unbelievers, atheists, and agnostics was almost 
nil. This is the general opinion that comes with great 
unanimity from chaplains and other religious workers. 

THE PROPORTION OF CHRISTIANS 

The great majority of men were nominal Christians, 
at least to the extent that they would express some 
church preference when asked to do so. In July and 
August, 1918, a religious census was taken at Camp 
Devens, Mass., through the cooperation of the Y. M. 
C. A., the camp pastors and the military authorities. It 
covered 25,607 men. Of this number only 586 failed to 
express some church preference — approximately two per 
cent of the whole number. In a religious census of 1,487 
men in the base hospital at a southern camp, only sixteen 
expressed no preference. 

Such figures as those secured in a religious census in 
the army do not have much value in estimating definite 
church connection. In any census conducted in part by 
military authority there is a considerable amount of 
rather forced and artificial selection. Church preference 
often meant no more than that the man's mother was of 
such and such affiliation and that he would prefer to be 
married or buried by such and such a minister. But the 
mere expression of some preference by the great majority 



10 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

of men indicates a very general acceptance of a nominal 
Christian affiliation. And the testimony of chaplains^ 
confirms this judgment : 

"Almost every man claimed membership in some 
church, often mere preference." 

"A very large percentage have some connection with 
the Church and feel that they belong to it. I would place 
it as high as 90 per cent." 

"I was assigned to the Seventeenth Infantry, and in 
making a religious census of the organization I dis- 
covered that the great majority held to some faith, 
either Catholic or Protestant." 

"A majority of my men were nominal Christians and 
claimed some church connection." 

"Most men were nominal Christians and did claim 
some church connection," 

When we turn to the question of definite church con- 
nection in the form of baptism, profession of faith or 
confirmation, there are no accurate figures available. 
Various estimates are made but it is almost impossible 
to weigh or compare them because the extent of church 
connection upon which the judgments are based is un- 
known. When one chaplain says "Almost 85 per cent are 
members of some Church" and another that "about 30 
per cent were members of some recognized Church," it 
is clear that they are not dealing with the same thing. 
In general it is fair to say that chaplains believe a large 
proportion of men have some slight church connection. 
Many have been baptized, many have attended Church 
or Sunday school as children, many have joined the 
Church in youth. There would be considerable agree- 
ment on such statements as these: 

"I find that nearly all the men in this Base Hospital 
had some kind of training in the Christian religion." 

"The men have been almost invariably under religious 
influence of some sort in childhood." 



^ "Chaplains" will be loosely used throughout this report to include not 
only commissioned chaplains but also camp pastors and secretaries of the 
Y. M. C. A. 



THE MEN AND CHRISTIANITY 11 

Nominal Christians and nominal church members are 
numerous, but real Christians and active church mem- 
bers are few. By Christians in this report we do not 
mean saints; we mean men largely motivated by loyalty 
to Christ and His teachings.* By active church members 
we do not mean "ecclesiastical laymen," we mean men 
with a definite loyalty to some branch of the great Chris- 
tian community, who feel responsible for its life and are 
nurtured by its ministrations. That such men are a 
small minority is the clear testimony. 

"Few are genuine churchmen." "A small number were 
faithful; a larger number irregular and the majority 
indifferent." 

"The Churches ought to recognize that they have never 
gained the interest and enthusiasm of eight out of ten of 
the generation just coming to maturity. As far as vital 
motivations go, these fellows are not Christians at all, but 
merely more or less decent young pagans."^ 

"Probably 15 per cent would be near to the number of 
men who previous to entering the service had a vital 
religious connection." "Perhaps 15 per cent were vital 
Christians." "The real Christian soldiers were as few 
as the harvest was great in every instance. I speak of 
the masses of young men over whom I had spiritual over- 
sight and not of the faithful few who can always be 
found anywhere." 

The figures quoted by these correspondents are not 
significant except as attempts to visualize the situation. 
They do not pretend to be statistical, but they do give 
an impression.^" 



* The question as to the extent to which we should expect men to be 
consciously Christian might well be raised, both here and elsewhere in this 
report. A member of the Committee has raised the query "whether we are 
not looking too much to the conscious, too little to the subconscious, atti- 
tudes of our men; and whether there is not something quite normal in the 
main phenomenon which impresses us in these studies — the comparative 
faintness of the conscious religious attachments and professions on the part 
of many men." 

' B. I. Bell, "The Church and the Civilian Young Man," Atlantic Monthly. 

1" It is interesting to note that the same impression is shared by three of 
the most widely read British chaplains. T. W. Pym in "Papers from 
Picardy" writes: "Christian believers are of course the smallest class numeri- 
cally; it is always amazing that any one can succeed in persuading himself 
that English men and women who believe in Jesus as their Saviour and try 
to follow Him are in anything but a minority." Norman MacLean in "God 
and the Soldier" says: "It would be idle to pretend that the majority of our 



12 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

Whether these reports summon up the picture of a 
great overgrown body with a spark of life at its center or 
that of a little leaven slowly leavening the whole lump 
will depend on a man's faith. Whether they are sur- 
prising or not will depend on a man's expectations. The 
conditions are, of course, but the projection of the situa- 
tion in civilian life. 

A recent writer in the religious press reports on his 
own confirmation of this situation : 

"Some people may think that these unpleasant facts 
fit some other church, but as far as their own church is 
concerned they are satisfied by the number of names that 
it has on its Honor Roll. A study of the Honor Roll of a 
number of churches shows that many of the men whose 
names are enrolled there are really out of touch with the 
Church. Most pastors have placed the name of every 
man that has left his parish for service, in either the army 
or navy, on the Honor Roll of the Church. If a family 
calls on a minister to conduct their funeral services or to 
perform their marriage ceremonies they are naturally 
considered a part of that parish. When their boy has 
been called to the colors they like to know that his name 
is on the Honor Roll of the Church. The Churches 
have recognized this desire and gladly placed these names 
on their Honor Rolls. 

"A questionnaire was recently sent out to all the 
churches of a near-by presbytery. This group of churches 
.... included both large and small, strong and weak, 
country and suburban churches. It represented a dis- 
tinctly American church-going community. Twenty-six 
churches answered these questions. Two of them did not 
tabulate their answers because of the peculiar local 
conditions in a small village, the Honor Roll being a 
village and not a church aflFair. These twenty-four 
answers showed that the churches represented had 665 
names on their Honor Rolls. One hundred and ninety- 
five of these men were active in church work, 351, 
including the active church workers, were regular in 
attendance at churches, and 246 seldom or never attended 



soldiers are in any vital connection with the Church." A. H. Gray in "As 
Tommy Sees Us" writes: "A large majority of the adult males remain 
outside all religious organization and apparently indifferent to religion." 



THE MEN AND CHRISTIANITY 13 

church. The discrepancy between the total number and 
the sum of those who attended church and those who did 
not attend was due to the number of men away from 

home, either at college or at work The figures are 

startling. Out of the 665 names on the Honor Rolls of 
these churches only about half of them are known to be 
regular church attendants and 246 are seldom or never at 
church. This study of the Honor Roll churches shows 
that the same state of affairs exists at home as existed in 
a cantonment. The Honor Roll does not show the num- 
ber of men that have been interested in the Church. It 
shows instead the number of men in whom the Church is 
interested, which is a very different thing. It shows the 

number of men that the Church is responsible for 

"All these facts seem to indicate that the Church is not 
holding its young men. I have no means of estimating 
the number of men that do not happen to have their 
names on the Honor Roll of any church, but I have no 
doubt that it is a goodly proportion of all the men in a 
camp. They are entirely unchurched and no church has 
a feeling of responsibility for them." " 

This situation is of course not new, but in the army we 
have seen it with a clarity and convincingness that can- 
not be escaped. In so far as we have tended to think of 
the Churches as the nation in its religious capacity we 
have been far from the truth. Judging by the army, we 
have a large majority of nominal Christians, a very 
considerable body of nominal Church members and a 
small nucleus of conscious Christians and active church 
members. America is not a Christian nation in any 
strictly religious sense ; it is a mission field. 

If definite believers are a small minority, it is quite as 
clear that definite unbelievers are almost negligible from 
the point of view of numbers. Of the 25,607 registered 
in the census at Camp Devens two called themselves 
agnostic, five atheistic, two freethinkers, four "no reli- 
gion," while 586 expressed no church preference. Of 
the 1,487 registered at the southern camp sixteen avowed 



1* Edwin A. McAlpin, Jr., "Cantonment and Christianity," in The Pres- 
byterian Advance. 



14 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

no religion. And these results are in general accord with 
the observations of chaplains : 

"There was only one case in the entire six months that 
I was in Boulogne of a man signing 'None' as his religion 
and that man signed 'Atheist.' " "I have met only one 
man who professed to be an infidel." 

WIDESPREAD IGNORANCE AS TO THE MEANING OF 
CHRISTIANITY AND CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 

If there is any one point upon which chaplains agree 
it is in regard to the widespread ignorance as to the 
meaning of Christianity and church membership. It is 
of course one thing to be a Christian and quite another 
to know what Christianity is. It is one thing to be a 
living member of the body of the Church and another 
to know what the Church stands for and what member- 
ship in it involves. We might well hope that in a 
"Christian" country men generally, even those without 
any allegiance to Christ or His Church, would know what 
Christianity is. Chaplains say that they do not know. 
And they go beyond that and say that men nominally 
within the Church, men who have been to Christian 
schools, are in much the same condition. They do not 
have the Christian idea of God ; they have no clear 
knowledge of Christ ; the Kingdom of God is often a 
meaningless term to them ; the meaning of Christian 
prayer, the use of sacraments, the obligations of church 
membership are very, very vague to them. The Church 
as a teacher has failed to instruct its own membership 
and present its Gospel to the men just outside its doors. 
Perhaps the unanimity on this point can best be demon- 
strated by liberal quotation from chaplains. 

"The imperative need of teaching. The average young 
American knows very little about God, Christ, prayer, 
faith." 

"The great need is definite instruction. I find that 
most men know little or nothing of Christian dogma." 

"They have had little or no religious training." 



THE MEN AND CHRISTIANITY 15 

"Beyond the religious training of the first ten years 
few have advanced." 

"The first thing that I noticed among the men in the 
camps was a very prevalent lack of any definite religious 
teaching. This was true of men of all denominations ; 
comparatively few of them had any reason for the faith 
that was in them." 

"A small proportion of church members had clear 
ideas as to what Christianity is or what church member- 
ship involves. You cannot overstress the widespread re- 
sults of the lack of definite Christian education. 

"Should we not include education in the idea of the 
kingdom of God? I found when it came to this that I 
had to begin at the beginning and lead men gradually to 
the idea. Not one in a hundred had apparently ever 
heard of it. I mean among the church-goers. Religion 
was to them a personal and individual matter. Of course 
that must be the foundation, but it ought not stop there, 
and as far as I can see ministers in general have been 
letting it stop there, or have been so vague about the 
kingdom that men haven't caught the idea at all." 

"What happened in Private B's case and in that of 
many others is simply this : When he turned his thoughts 
inward and started to draw on his religious knowledge he 
discovered he had practically none. What he did have, 
what he remembered from the teaching of his church at 
home, seemed utterly inadequate to meet the situation. "^^ 

"I honestly believe that three-fourths of the men who 
went into the camps had only a hazy and very unvital 
idea of Christianity, despite our Sunday schools, etc. ; 
.and that these defects of teaching must be remedied at 
once." 

"The paucity of his knowledge about the Bible and the 
church has appalled me and made me realize how super- 
ficial has been the impact of the Church upon him." 

"To my mind the important thing is the revelation of 
general ignorance about church and religion and so of the 
almost total failure of the teaching work of the Church." 

In this connection the following observations made in 
regard to the results of the Roman Catholic and Lutheran 
systems of religious education by chaplains of another 
denomination are of interest : 



" A. S. Lane, in The Living Church. 



16 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

"The large majority do not know what they beheve 
outside the Roman CathoHcs and the Lutherans." 

"My own personal experience was that the Lutherans 
had as good a hold on their own men in service as anyone, 
not excepting the Roman Catholics. Their training was 
definite and they were clear in what they believed. Here 
we find the lasting influence of the parochial school. "^^ 

Apparently this experience of failure is not confined to 
the Church in the United States. A report based on in- 
quiries among Anglican chaplains in the Canadian Chap- 
lains Service finds that the primary shortcoming revealed 
in the Canadian army is a lack of definite and adequate 
teaching of the fundamental principles of the Christian 
faith. And in England the Report of the Archbishops' 
First Committee of Inquiry has this to say on the situa- 
tion found in the British army : "It is pointed out in our 
army, that while 70 per cent of the soldiers are described 
as *C. of E.'^* only an insignificant proportion has either 
any real knowledge of what a churchman is supposed to 
believe or any practical appreciation of the use of the 
sacraments. Even though it must be remembered that of 
those officially known as 'C. of E.' a large number cannot 
be regarded as genuine members of the Church, this 
statement is startling and significant. The Church can- 
not be said to have attained the end which it set before 
itself at the Reformation, namely, that the laity should be 
really instructed in Christian faith and practice." 

In terms of our divided American Protestantism the 
same summary would express the judgment of our chap- 
lains as to the situation found in the American army. Our 
laity are not really instructed in Christian faith and 
practice. 



^* A Lutheran minister of wide experience makes, however, the following 
comment: "Among the Lutherans of the Eastern states I should say that 
probably less than 10 per cent have ever had any parochial school training; 
in the Western states the percentage would be higher but would hardly 
reach one half. The real secret of the thing is the catechetical training 
which precedes confirmation and which is universal in the Lutheran 
Churches." 

" Church of England. 



THE MEN AND CHRISTIANITY 17 

THE FIDELITY OF THE FAITHFUL 

It would give a false and one-sided impression of the 
whole situation to close this section of the report without 
grateful reference to the positive Christianity and the 
loyalty to the Church of the minority who were largely 
motivated by loyalty to Christ and His teaching and who 
had a definite relationship to the Church. In camp and 
hospital and front lines there were always found men who 
were strengthened in their personal morality, sustained 
in the face of danger, suffering, loneliness and death, and 
given hope and idealism in the midst of the brutal busi- 
ness of war by their personal Christianity and their con- 
nection with the Church. They went beyond the morality 
of the group or the literal demands of army discipline. 
They had a strong resolution, in the face of the excessive 
temptations of army life, which kept them clean morally 
as well as medically and conserved their full power for 
the service of their cause.^^ In that cause they saw the 
purposes of God and in that faith served in the army 
freely and whole-heartedly and without malice. By 
prayer they bridged the distances between themselves and 
those they loved at home. In the sacraments they found 
constant renewal. By faith they met death, not with 
bravado nor stoicism, but with assurance. 

One of the significant aspects of army life has been the 
large place that the chaplains have held in the esteem and 
affection of the men. A minister lately back from France 
who made a special point of investigating the chaplains' 
work in the A. E. F. reports that after talking incognito 
with hundreds of officers and men he had found an almost 
unanimous attitude of personal regard for the chaplains 
and admiration for their work. But such an attitude 



" "Young men living an unnatural life under war conditions have one or 
two temptations against which the struggle is extraordinarily difficult. I do 
not say that every definite churchman stands upright, still less that every 
inarticulate Christian falls, but I am quite sure that this is just one of the 
things in which definite profession of allegiance to Christ gives a strength 
which a vague, inarticulate Christianity is powerless to provide." Geoffrey 
Gordon. 



18 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

towards these representatives of religion indicates some- 
thing more important than the fine quaUties of the chap- 
lains themselves — it suggests also in an unmistakable way 
that there was a real demand in the army for the presence 
of the minister of religion, services of worship and Chris- 
tian work. The chaplains could not have received the 
standing that they did receive in the estimation of the 
men nor could they have effectively carried on their reli- 
gious work unless in every unit in the army there had 
been not only a general interest in religion but also many 
devoted Christian men who carried their Christian loyalty 
through all the testings of the war. 

War commissions and pastors throughout the nation 
have hosts of letters expressing the gratitude of men for 
the ministrations of the Church and testifying to the 
central place which their church connection has had in 
the making and sustaining of their lives. Such men co- 
operated generously with chaplains and camp pastors 
and welfare workers and local churches, adding to their 
military duties a free service to the Church. In their 
units they stood for their religion with frankness and 
simplicity. In their personal religious habits they were 
faithful and as constant in uniting with the corporate 
worship of the Church as the pressure and uncertainty of 
military life would permit. 

A Y. M. C. A. worker overseas tells of a private who, 
in the absence of any chaplain in the unit, gathered a little 
group together "to read the Bible and talk over the things 
they read." A chaplain in a reconstruction hospital 
reports that two or three privates, entirely on their own 
initiative, organized an enthusiastic Christian Endeavor 
Society among the convalescent patients. "We thought," 
said the leader of the group, "that since it had helped us 
at home to be in a Young People's Society it would help 
us here and might also encourage some of the other boys 
who hadn't thought much of the Church before." A 
letter from a man in France to his mother, just after his 



THE MEN AND CHRISTIANITY 19 

brother had been killed in action, is typical for revealing 
the strength of character that draws its nourishment from 
faith in Christ and from Christian training: 

"What a pity it is that so many people lack a solid back- 
ing in God ! It is so manifest over here. I see nearly 
every day men of all ages who fall utterly before the 

slightest temptation that crosses their path They 

are so pitiful. They never have had God I so 

often wonder why I have had this wonderful opportunity 
and advantage, which so many people never had — to be 
reared in a truly Christian home. Isn't it wonderful what 
Christ can do for us? Nothing really matters if we keep 
close to Him — and so few know that !" 

One hesitates to give such illustrations as these of the 
fidelity of Christian men lest they should seem to the 
reader to be exceptional instances rather than typical. 
They are not unusual, — every chaplain has similar stories 
of his own. A religious work director of the Y. M. C. A. 
in a great training camp throughout the war could even 
say: 

"My two years at introduced me into a com- 
munity which was a continual inspiration to me, and the 
transformations in human lives were to me new chapters 
in the Acts of the Apostles." 

One army surgeon will suffice for final illustration of 
the thousands of Christian men who like him commanded 
the admiration and devotion of all with whom they came 
in contact. The major of his regiment writes of this 
particular doctor: 

"He was a man of quiet, unobtrusive yet strong, un- 
selfish and distinctive personality, always cheerful, giving 
his whole-hearted devotion to the care of the men. I 
considered him one of the highest types of Christian 
character, and I discovered that he was continuously en- 
gaged in some Christian work. He had had a Bible class 
in my battalion for some six months, which he founded 
and conducted and he was generally looked upon as the 
most genuine chaplain we had. He was always on the job 
as a regimental surgeon, and at the same time always on 



20 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

the job in all religious work, I considered him a rare 
man. He was very capable, always mentally wide awake 
and was considered by me, my officers and men as one of 
the most sincere and genuine Christians we knew. The 
battalion had consistently the best health record in the 
regiment." 

There was nothing obtrusive nor religiously profes- 
sional about this surgeon. He was simply a Christian 
layman who carried his Christian faith and his Christian 
Hfe with him wherever he went and who made Chris- 
tianity a winning and beautiful thing to the men of his 
regiment. 



CHAPTER II 

THE MEN AND THE CHURCH 

In the current discussions of religion in the army, there 
has been considerable emphasis on the criticism of the 
Church and the Christianity of the Church expressed by 
"the man in the street." It is clear that the British chap- 
lains both found and expressed a good deal of criticism. 
Most of the English books on religion in the army, such 
as "A Student in Arms," "Papers from Picardy," "As 
Tommy Sees Us," "The Church in the Furnace," and 
"God and the Soldier," deal with it. 

Were these criticisms of the Church and the religion it 
preaches found in the American army? They were 
certainly found. But their actual extent and seriousness 
are very hard to weigh. Chaplains sometimes heard them. 
Chaplains frequently express them on their own account 
or in an effort to explain men's alienation from the 
Church. The criticisms are quite as interesting and im- 
portant as coming from many Christian ministers in 
service as from "the man in the street." Probably they 
were far more common among officers and college men 
than among men generally. At any rate they were found. 
But that is very different from saying that they repre- 
sent the opinions of the average soldier. Many American 
soldiers belonged to some branch of the Church and were 
contented in their membership. Many more respected 
it as representative of the goodness and piety of those 
they loved. Many were so indifferent to the Church that 
they spent little time thinking about it, either favorably 
or otherwise. Some criticized it. 

In so far as their criticisms can be gathered up they 



22 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

group themselves under two heads: (1) Criticisms of the 
Church for inadequacy in its moral ideal and moral life 
and (2) Criticisms of the Church for unreality or 
triviality. 

CRITICISMS OF THE CHURCH FOR INADEQUACY IN 
ITS MORAL IDEAL AND MORAL LIFE 

In any discussion of the criticisms that are commonly 
made of the Church it is exceedingly difficult to know 
how to estimate their real significance. What men lightly 
say about the Church does not necessarily represent their 
own inner attitude to it. Superficial criticisms may sim- 
ply be a way of excusing their own indifference to any 
spiritual interpretation of life. Nevertheless it is im- 
portant for us to give thoughtful attention to what men 
do say. 

The following are typical of the criticisms reported or 
expressed by chaplains : 

1. That the religion preached by the Church is pri- 
marily a selfish thing — the seeking of a personal reward. 
That it is "all an elaborate attempt to make sure their 
own salvation or compass their own spiritual growth. 
The motive behind it all is self -regarding." 

"Some men here seem to feel that to be religious means 
that you are worried as to what will happen to you when 
you 'go west.' " 

"Men have been taught to save their own precious 
hides. The end of religion seemed to be getting men into 
heaven, not fitting them to live on earth." (An officer.) 

"How intolerable to those who have caught the devo- 
tion of the army is a certain habitual selfishness in the 
Church's appeal to men ! If in France today, in speaking 
of soldiers, anyone suggests that they will soon die, that 
if they do they may go to hell unless they are 'prepared,' 
and that therefore they had better believe something 
religious to avoid the contingency, that man incontinently 
shuts up or else he leaves France, or more probably he 

does both There is a fundamental antipathy 

between such talk and the spirit in which the whole army 



THE MEN AND THE CHURCH 23 

is living. The former is thoroughly self-centered. The 
latter is gloriously self-forgetful." .... "Come to God 
that you may be safe — will that do? Come to God for 
there is in His hands solace for believers — will that do? 
.... Will any mean, self -centered motive do?"^^ 

2. That Christianity as presented by the Church is 
mainly a negative, prohibitory thing, a collection of 
"don'ts," a matter of abstinence. 

"They are looking upon the Church as a negative, pro- 
hibitory institution only." 

"Each of them knows a clergyman whom he likes, but 
they regard the profession as an association of trained 
kill-joys." 

"The men of the army quarrel with the negativeness 

of the churches' ethics The soldiers seriously 

think that the character which the churches seek con- 
sists of little more than abstinence from a multitude of 

pleasurable things The righteousness of the 

saints, in the general estimation of the army, is little more 
than anti — anti-dance, theater, cards, drink, smoke, pro- 
fanity, and all fun on Sundays."^^ 

3. That even if the moral standards of the Church are 
good, Church members do not live up to them. Church 
members are not marked by their positive sacrificial 
goodness. In fact their lives are often peculiarly color- 
less or narrow or effeminate. They are frequently harsh 
and ungenerous in their judgments of other men. The 
individual lives of professing Christians are not good 
enough to attract and convert. 

"What is needed is not a new Church but a new spirit 
in its members." 

"Whatever antipathy to the Church may be found is 
usually traced to the hypocrisy of some persons con- 
nected with the Church, which has caused the observer to 
adopt an attitude of cynicism." 

"Lack of sincerity in living. Our ethical demands of a 
constructive sort are not high enough. We do not sacri- 



" H. E. Fosdick, "The Trenckes and the Church at Home," Atlantic 
Monthly. 
" Ibid. 



24 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

fice enough to make any real impression upon these 
young fellows who pitilessly observe that we who worship 
the Supreme Sacrifice are not very good sacrificers, and 
that the Church condones our ill success at it." 

4. That in the life within the Churches there is not the 
generous and unaffected comradeship which would be 
appropriate. The Church talks of brotherhood, men say, 
but it is not a brotherhood itself. It has not the "all-one- 
body feeling." The class distinctions "of this world" are 
carried over with little alleviation into the fellowship of 
believers. And the interests and contentments of the 
possessing classes in the existing economic order blind 
avozued Christians to the needs and aspirations of the 
great body of men. 

"For quite a while I have looked for the spirit of Jesus 
Christ in the work of the Christian Church and according 
to my way of thinking it is damned hard to find it." 
(An enlisted man.) 

"In practically every church there is a social standard 
set and only those persons are welcome who grade up to 
that standard. They do not actually throw you out 
bodily, but they throw you out by the attitude they take. 
If you are under-grade they do not notice you at all." 
(An enlisted man.) 

"The Church caters altogether too much to the 
moneyed class." (An enlisted man.) 

"My church in West Virginia is supported by a rich 
man in a mining community, where he owns everything, 
including the soul of the minister." 

"Out in the oil country of the West its ministers cater 
to the oil barons." (An enlisted man.) 

"At the end of the sermon a keen young fellow came 
up and said : 'Chaplain, that was saying something all 

right, but it is mighty funny talk from an . I've 

been around to a lot of your churches, and I never saw 
one yet where the man with the long green, no matter 
what sort of a fellow he was, didn't run things pretty 
much to suit himself. Lots of folks believe that with you 
plunder is a sure sign of piety. You're training with the 
wrong team.' "^^ 

18 B. I. Bell, in The Churchman. 



THE MEN AND THE CHURCH 25 

"Comradeship is the glory of the army, and in the 
comradeship previous wealth, rank, occupation do not 

count I do not see how these soldiers are coming 

back to many of our churches, where pews are owned or 
rented, and where the congregation is so seated that a 
man's relative income can be estimated by his compara- 
tive distance from the altar of the Lord's sacrifice. 
. . . . There is a shocking incongruity between an 
attack at the front — rich and poor, learned and ignorant, 
prominent and obscure going over the top together — and 
a congregation in a wealthy metropolitan church singing: 
'Onward, Christian soldiers, marching as to war.' "^^ 

CRITICISMS OF THE CHURCH FOR UNREALITY 
OR TRIVIALITY 

1. It is sadly true that many men fail to see in the 
Church primarily a company of people committed to a 
common view of life and following a common zuay of 
life. They think of it in terms of buildings and officials. 
As such it seems to some a convenient institution for the 
performance of conventional ceremonies, venerable, re- 
spectable, but not much concerned with the real business 
of life. 

"Two things work together to keep men out of the 
Churches. First, the counter attractions, and second, the 
failure of the Church to relate its life to the vital interests 
of men's life. What do men think of the Churches? 
They reverence them as they do their grandmother." 

"The Church to them is not representative of the fight 
for a square deal ; it is for the women and children and 
disconsolate. You go there to be married and buried, 
but it is not the natural resort of healthy, active men." 

"He believes the Churches should be supported and is 
willing to contribute money for that purpose, but services 
and sermons are not in his line, frankly they bore him." 

"I find a general belief that it is impossible to mix 
religion with business." 

2, Much that the Church emphasizes men find unim- 
portant, uninteresting, and not especially relevant to 



" H. E. Fosdick, "The Trenches and the Church at Home," Atlantic 

Monthly. 



26 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

Christianity. In sermons and services it often seems 
interested in antiquarian details for their ozun sake. The 
tones of its ministers sound artificial to some, and the 
language of its sermons and liturgies is unintelligible to 
many.^^ 

"The charge is brought against the organized Church 
with its formulas and ceremonies and numberless divi- 
sions that it has 'taken tithe of mint, anise, and cum- 
min and omitted the weightier matters of the law.' " 

"They demand reverence, but it must be genuine, 
virile, of the people, not of the choir, free from holy tones 
(which are just as common to Methodist deacons as they 
are to Anglican clergy), downright and honest. The 
amount of ritual makes no difference — it is the sincerity 
with which it is done that makes the difference." 

"The belief that church services are dry and uninter- 
esting and have a message chiefly for women and children 
accounts in some degree for the alienation of men," 

"The war has disclosed the fact that many Protestant 
ministers have been out of touch with modern life and 
have been using a vocabulary which plain men find mean- 
ingless. Virile men insist upon understanding what is 
said and having what is said spoken in plain English and 
to the point." 

"Sermons as usually served up are terribly thin. The 
minister begins by saying, T take my text this morning, 

brethren, from so and so' and then spends most 

of his time in telling you all about that text, and who 
taught it, and where it was written. If that same minister 
preached right from his shoulder against adultery and 
went into details, that would be real preaching, and would 
count. He ought to preach about what happens in 1919, 
not about a lot of details concerning Jonah and Jeremiah, 
and Jesus and John." (An enlisted man.) 

"If we could choose our own chaplain, he would be 
something of this order: We want a man-sized man, with 
a real man's voice when he talks and we want him to use 



="> "The simple truth of the matter is that the reason why these men do 
not go to Church is that they are not interested in the things which the 
Church provides. They are at one with the Church in many of her teach- 
ings, but it seems to them that she expresses those teachings in a different 
language from their own, different not only in words but in habits of 
thought as well. To them the Church is a great organized unreality. They 
neither desire it nor do they hate it. They simply leave it alone as a thing 
entirely out of their line." John Kelman, "The War and Preaching." 



THE MEN AND THE CHURCH 27 

ordinary everyday language and say exactly what he 
means. No beating around the bush, just plain, unadul- 
terated facts. We want his talks to deal with the facts 
of today, facts that we can apply to our own lives and we 
want them to be interesting and full of what we can see is 
truth, and last but not least, we do not want to have to 
sit and listen to him for three hours at a time." 

3. That the "doings" of the Church and the tasks it 
gives men to do are often so trivial. 

"Men of ability will not feel like doing for the church 
something which some office boy could do just as well." 

"What these men want is not a lot of services, nor to be 
urged to take up the offering or usher, but an actual task 
to accomplish and one in which they can use their own 
personality. To have such work to give these men, the 
objective of the Church must be not her own preserva- 
tion, but the Kingdom of God, and this objective must 
be formulated in very concrete terms that seem to the 
soldier to be worth the battle." 

"When the preacher attempts to handle practical mat- 
ters, .... he jumps in on matters that are not worth 
while ; in the big crises he seems to prefer to let the devil 
have his way." 

We believe that many American chaplains would sub- 
scribe to the following statement in a recent British 
report on the condition of the Church : 

"The most serious difficulties we actually find in prac- 
tice arise from the fact that the Church is not good 
enough rather than because men and women are too bad 

to care about religion They demand of the 

Church plain evidence of the vital power of the Chris- 
tianity it professes. They ask to see within the church 
more sacrifice, more fellowship, more heroism, more 
brotherhood, more zeal for the uplifting of human life 
and for the regeneration of the whole social order than 
they can discover within its border. That is the standard 
by which they are judging the Church in the midst of 
them."2i 

The criticisms of the religious work of the Y. M. C. A. 
in certain quarters may have something to teach the 

" Report of the Archbishops' Third Committee of Inquiry. 



28 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

Church, quite apart from the question as to whether the 
criticisms were generally justified. They indicate certain 
failings of religious organizations to which some classes 
of men are especially sensitive and which they find 
thoroughly repellent. The things most commonly criti- 
cized in the religious work of the Association were the 
following: 

1. The attempt to "capture" men rather than minister 
to them, or to minister to them for the sake of making a 
''capture." What men respond to is disinterested service. 
Any suggestion that they are being fished for and that 
some pride will be taken in "the catch" is especially 
repellent. 

"Too often it discounts a very genuine service by show- 
ing that after all it was trying, not so much actually to 
minister to as to capture men." 

2. The deception of secreting a religious appeal in a 
program of entertainment. How often this occurred we 
do not know. It did occur occasionally and was the 
source of considerable criticism. ^^ 

"One of the most damnable forms of insincerity is the 
camouflage used to beguile men to attend services 
unknowingly. A man goes to the Y. M. C. A. to see a 
moving picture. The psychology of his consciousness is 
all set for amusement at that moment. But, no ! he must 
pay for his amusement by sitting through a sermon, and 
is there anything more unchristian than that? Or per- 
haps only the service is held but the camouflagery comes 
in the advertising. 'Hear Dr. So and So of Toledo speak 
tonight.' And instead of a lecture, as expected, it is a 
regular religious service." 

"When we want vaudeville, we know where to get it ; 
when we want religion, we know where to get it. We 
don't want it mixed." 



'^ Probably this criticism, and some of the others, were found mainly 
among officers rather than among privates. A member of the Committee 
who had experience in the army throughout the whole period of the war 
writes: "The ordinary doughboy as I met him took religion and the Church 

for granted He did not worry if his movies and sermons were 

mixed The persons who were sensitive on these points were certain 

cynical, indifferent, college-bred officers who had to find something wrong 
in religion as presented to justify their not engaging in its service." 



THE MEN AND THE CHURCH 29 

3, Condescension. Men are remarkably sensitive to 
any note of spiritual pride, self-consciousness, or self- 
satisfaction in a religious ministry. A ministry is suc- 
cessful and wins men's confidence just in so far as its 
attitude is that of those who said, "When saw we thee a 
hungered, and fed thee ? or thirsty, and gave thee drink ?" 

"No A. E. F. man from now on will pass the tam- 
bourine of a Salvation Army meeting without putting 
some money in it. Their kind of religion captured our 
respect. They came with nothing, but they gave them- 
selves, and brought into the midst of our terrible experi- 
ence an indispensable something which we call the Chris- 
tion religion." 

4. Red Tape. The machinery of evangelism — the 
signing of pledge cards — and the overregulating of prac- 
tical ministrations, have both been criticized. 

ATTITUDE TOWARD DENOMINATIONS 

Although a great majority of the men expressed some 
church preference when urged to, it is quite clear that the 
preference was not very emphatic. Even among men 
who were on the fringe of active membership or attended 
the services available in the army the feeling of denomina- 
tional distinctions appears to have been very slight. 
There was of course a fairly sharp line between Catholics 
and Protestants. "Since becoming divisional chaplain 
I find that the denominational problem resolves itself 
into this form. There are Catholics and there are 
Protestants. The via media is utterly incomprehensible 
to the ordinary enlisted man." Unless carefully in- 
structed to the contrary, men frequently expressed their 
preference in terms of "Catholic" or "Protestant." 
Within Protestantism the "unchurched majority" do not 
find the divisions especially significant. Indifference to 
them is probably more characteristic than hostility. 

"The soldier knew very little about doctrinal differences 
between churches and cared less. It seemed senseless to 



30 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

him that the Protestant Church should be divided into 
denominations."^^ 

"With reference to denominations, the men have no 
comments to make whatever, simply because they do not 
think deeply enough about the situation. There is a very 
widespread feeling, however, that it doesn't matter much 
which church you belong to; at bottom they all stand 
pretty much for the same thing." (An enlisted man.) 

"There was quite a disposition among the men to 
assert that not only 'one church' but 'one religion' is as 
good as another." 

"With regard to the attitude of the men toward denom- 
inationalism one can hardly say that they are impatient 
with denominations simply because they do not reflect 
about them. It is nearer the truth to say that they ignore 
denominational lines. They simply do not care to what 
church a minister or a chaplain belongs." 

More significant than the attitude of the "unchurched 
majority" is the way in which the members of the various 
Protestant bodies ignored denominational lines under 
army conditions. In the main they showed little interest 
in the affiliation of the chaplain and rarely expressed any 
desire for distinctively denominational ministrations or 
services. The exceptions were mostly in the case of the 
liturgical or sacramental churches, such as the Lutheran 
and Episcopalian. 

"There seemed to be little differentiation among mem- 
bers of Protestant denominations with the possible excep- 
tion of Episcopalians." (An enlisted man.) 

"Men apart from the Roman Church and the Lutheran 
have practically no interest in denominational difference." 

"At least under war conditions there was no Protestant 
denominational feeling or desire for special denomina- 
tional services." 

"The church distinctions were almost wholly disre- 
garded. I don't remember a dozen occasions in nearly a 
year's experience when I was asked to what church I 
belonged, and it seldom occurred to me to make that 

inquiry unless I had particular reason to do so 

If I did not represent the particular body to which they 

''^ Chaplain Ross Miller, in Lutheran Church Work and Review. 



THE MEN AND THE CHURCH 31 

belonged I did represent the ministry of the church and 
that seemed to be sufficient." 

"They wanted their own church providing it empha- 
sized the sacramental life, otherwise they didn't care 
what church they attended. Roman Catholics, Episco- 
palians, Lutherans, and Christians looked for the Holy 
Communion weekly and expected it." 

"Twice I heard at Camp Upton of 'camp pastors' who 
tried to hold a denominational meeting — once for com- 
munion and once for a social evening. In both cases the 
response was pitifully small. Dr. Manning did have a 
regular early communion service, but the denominational 
note was not stressed, and everyone was invited, no ques- 
tions asked. I used to go myself when I could." 

"Careful analysis showed that only about 10 per cent 
of the Protestants in camp, with nothing else to do, care 
enough for their own church to attend its services on 
Sunday morning. Anywhere from 25 to 30 per cent of 
the Protestants attended the undenominational services. 
Even in the sacraments and prayer the men showed 
absolute disregard for denominational lines. "^* 

It may be said that the general attitude of Protestants 
as to the validity of the sacraments as administered by 
the several denominations is much like that of the public 
towards the marriage and burial services. "The un- 
churched public at present is inclined to regard it as one 
of its prerogatives to claim the functions of priest or 
clergyman in celebrating a wedding or a death." And 
though individuals may have some preference, the public 
is "not too particular whether its knot is tied by Presby- 
terian or Episcopalian."^^ 

Just as in the case of many people in civil life the men 
were very largely influenced by the personality of the 
individual chaplain in their choice of ministrations or con- 
tentment with those they had. A striking example of 
this is described by an overseas chaplain: 

"One day word came from headquarters that each man 
should make out a card denoting his religious persuasion. 
I knew that most of the men were Protestants ; so when 

" Edwin A. McAlpin, Jr., in The Continent. 

^ W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time, " Atlantic Monthly. 



33 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

I looked over the returning cards and saw three Jews 
and but three Protestants registered, and all the rest 
Roman Catholics, I was amazed. Calling a sergeant to 
me I remonstrated with him. 'Now you know this is not 
right,' I said. 'You know these men are Protestants.' 
Then the sergeant smiled and explained that all the boys 
had gotten together and decided to be 'Roman Catholics' 
for the duration of the war. 'They were afraid,' said the 
sergeant, 'that if they all registered as Protestants, Head- 
quarters would decide there weren't enough Catholics to 
keep you and the men would lose their chaplain !' " 



CHAPTER III 
THE FAITH OF THE MAJORITY 

Having said that only a small proportion of men are 
definitely Christian and that there is a widespread 
ignorance as to the truths of Christianity, it is important 
to go on to say that there is faith among the majority. 
Only a small minority are consciously atheistic. The rest 
have some religious ideas. They may be vague, sub- 
merged, far removed from a developed Christianity. 
They m.ay be definitely unchristian. But they are there. 
It is well to remind ourselves that even in a Christian 
country religion and Christianity are not synonymous. 

To generalize on the faith of the majority is admittedly 
hazardous. Statistics are not available and would be of 
little value if they were. Nor have we any considerable 
body of clearly expressed judgment on the part of chap- 
lains. But from our own experience and contact with 
chaplains we believe the following to be descriptive of the 
religious condition of the large number of men — many of 
them nominally Christian, many of them half in the 
Church, a few of them antagonistic to the Church — who 
constituted the majority in the American army. 

First of all, they tended to think that religion is 
primarily a matter of deeds rather than of belief, that 
belief does not matter much. "The feeling is quite 
prevalent that conduct is all. Belief, sacramental life, 
worship, etc., tend to enter as substitutes for conduct." 
Very many would certainly agree with Donald Hankey 
that "Christianity is a way of life, not an explanation of 
life." And in line with this tendency they were inclined 
to minimize the whole place and function of worship, 
man's communion with unseen realities, the relationship 



34 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

with God. If religion is to them largely a matter of 
deeds it is also largely a matter of man's relation with 
man. The average soldier would see point in "Thou shalt 
love thy neighbor." He easily overlooks "Thou shalt 
love the Lord Thy God" as the first commandment of 
Christianity, or merges it into love of neighbor. 

"A soldier student, when asked what should be the 
task of the preacher when the war was over, said that 
he must become untheological, turn right-about-face and 
preach humanity." 

"Their understanding of religion is largely humani- 
tarian. They find it difficult to see that righteousness 
involves relationship to God as well as a duty to man." 

"I call a religion a bum religion that only asks you to 
worship God without getting down to more practical 
matters." 

"Their religious faith, as I understand it, is very 
largely summed up in ethical precepts. Religion and 
righteousness are synonymous." 

"His convictions are few and largely ethical." 

"I found a general belief that theology was unim- 
portant and had no relation to life." 

There was almost unanimously an idea of God but it 
probably did not play a large part in the ordinary con- 
sciousness of the average man as he entered the army. If 
Donald Hankey is right in saying, "Religion means being 
aware of God as a factor in one's environment," the 
majority of men before the war were not very religious. 
God was not a very large conscious factor in their en- 
vironment. The thought of Him did not affect their 
plans very frequently. Few of them had any habitual 
practice of recollecting His being or will. But the idea 
was certainly there with the great body of men. "There 
is a universal belief in God." That is a common report. 
"Most of them have an admiration for Jesus Christ and 
a hazy belief in a Supreme Ruler of the universe, but this 
does not lead them definitely to undertake a Christian 
program for their own lives. "^* 

^ Chaplain A. O. Brown, in The Christian Advocate. 



THE FAITH OF THE MAJORITY 35 

The idea of God was generally vague. Most of us 
would have to answer to that charge. It was mainly a 
dim faith in Providence, in a good purpose behind life, in 
a friendly "control." "They believed in Him as the 
Supreme Being, as the Ruler of the Universe — but their 
faith, in most cases, did not seem to go far enough — it 
was not personal enough. There was that belief and that 
faith but it seemed to be far distant — His hand was the 
guiding hand of Destiny but He was not the controlling 
and guiding One in the everyday affairs of life." 

Of God as a present or future Judge of their personal 
lives most men had little consciousness. But probably 
"most men believed that God was on the side of right 
and were confident that in the end, Right, Liberty, and 
Justice would prevail over Despotism and Injustice." In 
the case of the few who had a more definite religious 
consciousness there was often the feeling that in waging 
this war they were doing what God would approve and 
were fighting on His side. 

A vague belief in immortality was also general among 
men as they came out of civilian life into the army. 
Whether or not their belief can be called "Christian" is a 
debatable point. It would be interesting to know how 
largely it is Christian in origin, how largely it is closely 
associated with the Resurrection.^^ We do not know. It 
is for the most part an undefined faith that death is not 
the end, that there is more life ahead. "Most of them 
take it for granted, apparently, that death is simply a 
transition, important perhaps, but not terrible, and that 
they are to live on, elsewhere."^* "Don't remember 
meeting a man (100,000 passed through this camp) who 
did not believe in the continuity of life." Miss Kirkland 
believes that "this assurance takes almost no color from 



" In this connection Dr. Kelman's judgment as to the attitude of the 
average man towards the Resurrection is interesting. "It would be difficult 
to name a doctrine^ which, in the theological statement of it, had less interest 
or even less meaning for soldiers. The stories of the resurrection of our 
Lord are very beautiful, but they are out of the sphere of the ordinary 
man's experience." ("The War and Preaching.") 

^ W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time," Atlantic Monthly. 



36 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

previous education, Catholic, Protestant, or agnostic." 
At any rate, it appears to have little of moral judgment 
involved in it, as conditioning the fact or the character 
of the future life. "Of course immortality and universal 
salvation must be distinguished. Most of the men be- 
lieved in both, but I have not yet found any man who did 
not believe in the first at least." 

These beliefs in God and immortality were for most 
men ideas "in reserve." They were not motives so much 
as "comforts." They were not controlling beliefs in the 
sense of being frequently thought and frequently brought 
to bear on men's decisions and actions. Rather they were 
comforting thoughts upon which men fell back in times 
of stress. In this sense they were widely distributed. 
In this sense the majority of men as we came to know 
them in the army were religious. 

Concerning the men's idea of Christ it is difficult to 
speak with any confidence. One of the most striking 
characteristics of the testimony received from chaplains 
and others in the preparation of this report is the meager- 
ness of evidence on this point, in spite of the fact that 
one of the questions asked in a questionnaire to which a 
considerable number of replies was received was, "What 
do the men think about Jesus Christ?" Perhaps this 
lack of evidence is in itself evidence of a significant kind. 
It would seem to imply that there was not sufficient 
definiteness or clarity in the men's minds on the subject 
to make it possible even for close observers to attempt 
any generalization. 

From the few testimonies that have come to us it 
would appear that when men think of Christ it is with 
a general feeling of great respect and admiration : 

"Most of them have an admiration for Jesus Christ." 

"The universal testimony of chaplains and welfare 

workers with whom I have talked regarding the soldier's 

attitude toward Jesus Christ is that this attitude was 

always one of respect. The use of Christ's name in pro- 



THE FAITH OF THE MAJORITY 37 

fanity was often unconscious. It was always employed 
to emphasize contentions, an unconscious tribute to the 
greatness of Jesus. No man ever swore at Jesus ; His 
name was brought in to help focus attention. On the 
wall of nearly every Y. M. C. A. hut was some represen- 
tation of Jesus and very few men passed by it without at 
some time pausing and gazing upon it with moral earnest- 
ness. The application of the teaching of Jesus to political 
or social problems in secular address invariably received 
the most respectful attention, and unless obviously dis- 
torted seemed to be accepted as final." (A Y. M. C. A. 
secretary of large experience.)^® 

This testimony would be corroborated in a general way 
by great numbers of ministers in the camps who found 
that whenever they spoke to the men of the character of 
Christ, or of Christ as their Comrade, there was a most 
unmistakable response. But many feel that those who 
customarily think of Christ at all are very few. 

"Christ occupied small place in their thoughts." 
"Those who think of Him at all consider Him an ideal 

kind of man. This number is very small. The rest do 

not think of Christ." 

Probably it would be fair to say, although our evi- 
dence here is more meager than elsewhere, that so far 
as men thought of Christ it was with feelings of admira- 
tion but that their respect rested on rather vague impres- 



^ Cf. the conclusion of the British committee which was convened by Dr. 
D. S. Cairns and the Bishop of Winchester and which has prepared the 
report entitled, "The Army and Religion": 

"There is practically universal respect and even reverence for Jesus 
Christ. This is quite plainly seen whenever the men disclose their real 
thoughts about Him, though it is often superficially disguised by the pro- 
fane use of His name He is recognized by all the serious thinking 

men as the best of the race, though there is this very frequent qualification, 
which seems inconsistent, that the heroic side of His character is largely- 
unknown, and it is clear that, even as a man, the outlines of His figure are 
very dim. We are told also that they do not seem to think much about 
Him. It is only when they do think that this reverence appears. They 
distinguish Him quite clearly from the Churches, which, as we shall see in 
a later chapter, they criticize without stint. But the whole deeper side of the 
Church's teaching about Jesus Christ seems to have little or no hold upon 
them, except of the loosest kind. Of Jesus as the Son of God, and as the 
Atoning Sacrifice for the world, they have little or no knowledge at all. 
Even more significant, perhaps, is it that our question as to whether the 
men knew of the Living Christ, that is to say, the Christ whose presence 
and power are realized by His servants, met with a negative that was 
practically universal, and that in many cases, when this Gospel was preached 
to them, it came as a startling novelty and attracted immediate attention." 



38 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

sions more than on any definite knowledge of His life 
or clear understanding of His teachings. 

"Most men still carry over from Sunday-school days 
a general idea that 'Christ was the best man that ever 
lived/ but they could tell you exceedingly little about His 
life or character. They would vaguely say that He was 
good and kind and unselfish. To great numbers He was 
hardly more than the sorrowful figure that they had seen 
in stained-glass windows, or a dim figure of the past far 
removed from their own present interests and needs." 

With life's fundamental alternatives, with the ques- 
tion of final destiny, with what is usually meant by salva- 
tion, most men were little preoccupied.^^ The anxious 
soul was comparatively rare. What William James called 
healthy-minded religion was dominant. "Very few men 
seemed to have any feeling akin to repentance further 
than a vague acknowledgment that they had been foolish. 
However they may regard sin it is not to them a cause 
of fear or sorrow.'^ 

It is worth while to remind ourselves that if religious 
faith was bewilderingly inarticulate, to such an extent 
as to tempt one to deny its existence, the same was true 
of men's idealism in regard to the war. That too was 



^ Cf. the following: "An overwhelming amount of evidence from many- 
sources shows that there is today little or no conscious sense of sin. There 
is a latent sense of something wrong, but of sin as guilt there is very often 
no sense at all, and little conscious need of a Saviour. That this is to some 
extent due to defective presentation and consequent misunderstanding of the 
meaning of salvation is undoubted, but it may also be due to the lack of a 
positive ideal which can through very contrast produce the sense of sin. 
Ideas which dominate the national life always affect the thoughts and ideals 
of the individual, and the failure of the Church to impress the nation with 
its own thought of God probably accounts in part for the inadequate sense 
of sin. 

"Superficial ideas about evolution, with a notion that everything is coming 
right in the end, a shallow fatalism, and easy going ideas about judgment 
and the character of God do not tend to make a man say, 'What shall I do 
to be saved?' It would seem, therefore, that while, as ever, repentance and 
remission of sins must be preached in Christ's name, we must at the same 
time remember that the fear and horror of judgment and the horror of sin, 
which has been in all ages such a powerful incentive to repentance, is today 
perhaps weaker than ever before. The profound difficulty of finding a 
motive for repentance and amendment that will appeal to our generation 
lies at the root of much of our ineffective evangelism." (Report of the 
Archbishops' Third Committee of Inquiry.) 

*^ The following comment, however, from one who read the galley proof 
of this report is worth noting: "This depends on the appeal that was made. 
A number of ministers have told me that they had never seen the purely 
evangelistic appeal responded to so readily as among the soldiers. My ex- 
perience is rather with your opinion, though I have not made the other 
appeal." 



THE FAITH OF THE MAJORITY 39 

vague, obscure, shy, fluctuating. It sometimes seemed 
as though there was nothing but a boyish football spirit, 
or a blind following of national mob impulse in the 
motives that carried men into the war. The response 
to the more conscious and ideal motives which were so 
prominent in American official utterance was hidden 
far down in the soldier's nature. 



CHAPTER IV 

MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE OF THE 
MAJORITY 

When we turn from religious ideas or beliefs to moral 
standards and moral life we begin to penetrate further 
into what has been called "the religion of the inarticu- 
late." Donald Hankey, who gave this phrase its cur- 
rency, insisted that "it did not necessarily follow that 
because a man was inarticulate he therefore had no 
religion. Action and objects of admiration, these [are] 
the things that we must watch if we would discover the 
true religion of the inarticulate." Many have found in 
the standards and life of men an encouragement which 
more than compensated for the slight hold which organ- 
ized and explicit religion appears to have. 

What were the virtues men admired and practiced? 
What were the vices they hated ? What were their weak- 
nesses ? 

Some caution needs to be observed in judging the 
character of the average man by the qualities he showed 
in the army. The life was abnormal in many ways ; men 
were separated from some of the normal social restraints 
and stimuli and given a new set of restraints and stimuli. 
The army was a male community. It was "monastic 
without the religious impulse of monasticism."^^ And 
women are pace setters in our present social system. 
The army was a cooperative, a communistic community, 
where property rights were slight and where mutual 
dependence was perfectly clear. Public opinion had the 
same exceptional power over the individual that it has 
in other highly unified communities such as a school or 



^ MacLean and Sclater, "God and the Soldier.' 



MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE 41 

college. The discipline and tradition of the army exalted 
certain virtues. Certain virtues were expected of every 
man — courage, for instance. And all the force of train- 
ing, popular opinion, and police power pointed in that 
direction. A very strong character, a man whose stan- 
dards and habits were thoroughly established and inde- 
pendent, would, of course, show himself unchanged. But 
the average man whose character is fluid and very respon- 
sive to his environment may be quite different in the army 
and out of it. It is not safe to expect the virtues he 
showed in war to be carried over into peace. Nor is it 
likely that some of the vices will be carried over either. 

"A man's mental self cannot be separated from his 
daily habits, from the environment he lives in, from the 
kind of difficulties he is coping with, from the plans, 
inhibitions, and ideas he is occupied with. In all these 
ways the mind of the soldier is marked off from the mind 
of the same man in civil life. Soldiering is a life having 
its own special strains and its own standards. It not only 
brings different muscles into action; it tests character in 
new places. "^^ 

Illustration of the effect of the unusual environment 
may be seen in the way that men varied according to 
circumstances, and in the striking contradictions in 
character produced. 

"You can't imagine how great a difference there is 
between an army at war and an army at peace. In time 
of war it is inspiring to be in an army. All petty causes 
and purposes are fairly burned up in the intensity of the 
great common aim. Men lose their selfishness, their 
greedy ambition, and all the unlovable part of their 
nature when in the heat of the fight. The degree of this 
change varies exactly with the distance from the actual 
front lines and with the degree of active service in which 
the man is engaged. The nearest thing you will ever see 
on this earth to a bunch of saints and angels is a bunch 
of infantry going through a bad barrage. I have seen my 
own bunch of roughneck truck drivers in a tight place 
and know how we felt towards each other. I recall one 



"* W. E. Hocking, "Morale and Its Enemies." 



43 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

occasion when we got in a traffic jam in the middle of the 
night while loaded with artillery ammunition. Those 
boys sat on those trucks loaded with enough high explo- 
sives to blow them into shreds and calmly pulled each 
other out of mud holes while the Germans shelled the 
road steadily. They cursed each other lustily the whole 
time, but never a grumble or a refusal to do anything 
necessary to clear the ground. I remember that at that 
moment I loved every one of them like a brother and I 
think they all felt the same way about it. The worst old 
pickpocket in the bunch seemed like the most lovable 
man I had ever met. The infantry went through that 
same experience in an intensified degree and for greater 
lengths of time. I am convinced, however, that this was 
felt very little outside of the actual danger zone and that 
it was not felt at all in the camps in the U. S." (Soldier's 
letter.) 

In "Papers from Picardy" T. W. Pym gives a very 
illuminating case which might readily have occurred in 
any army. 

"A friend of mine had his blanket taken ; so he watched 
his opportunity and took another man's. The weather 
was bitterly cold. He was not the least ashamed of his 
action, nor was he sorry for the man he had robbed even 
when he found that the loser was sufficiently scrupulous 
or clumsy not to replace his loss in a similar fashion. He 
would never have stolen the man's money, yet he could 
see no inconsistency in taking what was at the time 
worth much more to either of them than a fistful of five- 
franc notes. Later he risked his life in a gallant attempt 
to save the man he had previously despoiled — not, I feel 
sure, in any spirit of remorse — but for the simple fact 
that whereas it would be unreasonable to suffer cold and 
discomfort instead of another man, it was perfectly rea- 
sonable and indeed necessary to risk wounds and death 
itself in order to save the same man's life. The fine 
courage of the last act was in accordance with the disci- 
pline and training and the traditions of the British army, 
the theft of a blanket was outside the scope of discipline; 
it came under the influence of no tradition, save the oldest 
in the world's history — getting's keeping." 

The fact is that in the army the same men might be at 



MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE 43 

different times either Good Samaritans or thieves. Men 
who were shiftless, unwilling to share in the mainte- 
nance of the community's life, showed themselves ready 
and eager to die for it.^* Men who risked death and suf- 
fered pain for their country will not in the years ahead 
always live for it. In great measure these contradictions 
were due to the abnormal conditions, in part they are 
but the mystery of 

"These common souls and human 
Who laugh their sins abroad 
But hide the love of woman 
And seek the fear of God." 

In spite of these cautions it probably remains true that 
in general the virtues admired and practiced in the army, 
the vices hated there, and the weaknesses shown there, 
are fairly characteristic of the average man in civil life. 

VIRTUES GENERALLY ADMIRED AND 
FREQUENTLY FOUND 

The lists of virtues generally admired by men in the 
army and frequently found show a great deal of simi- 
larity. General assent would be given to such an analysis 
as the following: 

"Certain qualities are universally approved and ad- 
mired in a soldier and they are all positive qualities. 
He will stand up and fight to resent a personal insult or 
to help out a friend. He will be there when the battle is 
on however much he may be A. W. O. L. in peace times. 
He will be generous with his money and with any other 
good thing he has in his possession. He will be loyal to 

*• "Years before this war the penetrating writer of an 'Open Letter to 
English Gentlemen,' published in The Hibbert Journal, maintained that it 
was a far harder thing to live for one's community than to die for it — 
obviously so, as he said, since so many more were found to do the latter 
than to do the former. Many a man of ease and independence, who in the 
days of peace could not spare from his amusements the time to acquire 
first-hand knowledge of the social conditions ef the masses in an attempt 
to better them, has for many months on end denied himself both ease and 
independence in order to learn how to fight and, fighting — if necessary — to 
die. Many a man who would not have given up a shooting-box for one 
year in order to give a hundred families on the borders of destitution the 
chance of a fresh start in the colonies, has since laid down his life in de- 
fense of shooting-box and slum-dwelling alike." T. W. Pym. 



44 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

his mother and his home and will show it by the letters 
he writes and the size of his allotment. He will be modest 
about his own achievements, will lie marvellously to save 
a friend, but will tell the straight of it when being ques- 
tioned on his own account. He will get along with a 
minimum of growling and will respond when the hard 
pull comes every time." 

"One might be almost content here simply to urge 
complete loyalty, in the new life at home, to what has 
come to be thought the soldier's own fourfold ideal of 
courage, unselfishness, generosity, and modesty, espe- 
cially when the ideal is supplemented by what the editor 
of The Stars and Stripes says might be called the soldier's 
great fifth virtue — cheerful patience. "^^ 

F. B. Smith after considerable inquiry among troops 
in France published an article entitled "Four Sins the 
Soldiers Say They Hate," in the course of which he sum- 
marized his conclusions as follows: 

"All these tests, among widely separated groups, pro- 
duced answers so nearly identical that it seems beyond 
question that we may take the result as the code of 
morals which our soldiers have set up for themselves. 

"Now, what is this code? 

"First — Courage 

"Second — Unselfishness 

"Third — Generosity 

"Fourth — Modesty or Humility 

"These four qualities were put at the top by such an 
overwhelming majority that there was absolutely no 
question of their place there. And when we reversed the 
process and asked for the 'meanest sins,' the answers 
checked up the same. For the sins placed at the head of 
the list were : 

"First — Cowardice 

"Second — Selfishness 

"Third — Stinginess 

"Fourth— Boastfulness.''^" 



^ Henry Churchill King, "For a New America in a New World." 

The British accounts are to the same effect. "Courage, selflessness, 
and loyalty — these are the virtues that are being brought back from the 
bloodstained fields by the men." ("God and the Soldier.") 

"Their cheerfulness, stubbornness, patience, generosity, humility, and 
willingness to suffer and to die." ("Thoughts on Religion at the Front.") 

"They certainly did believe in unselfishness, generosity, charity, and 
humility." ("A Student in Arms.") 

2' In the American Magazine. 



MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE 45 

The virtues that emerge from many reports may be 
summarized as follows : 

1. Courage, especially physical courage — a carrying 
on in spite of fear — the ability to go steadfastly into 
danger, pain, and death. 

"This should be carefully widened to include the virtue 
of holding on even when one is afraid. Contrast must 
not be made between courage and fear, but between 
courage and failure. Many soldiers have testified to their 
downright fear under fire, but have rejoiced that they 
held on in spite of it. They make a good deal of the 
purely corporate force of this virtue." 

2. Unselfishness, especially a consideration for others 
when wounded, and readiness to take great risks to save 
a comrade's life. 

"We had a sergeant in our company who was shot 

through the lung We hardly picked him up when 

he said huskily, 'Don't touch me, fellows — look after 
those other boys. They are worse off than I am.' " 

"One of the most impressive things a man with a heart 
of any sort is bound to notice in the war is the universal 
way in which the wounded men try to help one another. 
This is noticeable everywhere, in No Man's Land, in the 
trenches, in a scrap, in the hospitals and dressing sta- 
tions — everywhere the chivalric, noble, generous, Ameri- 
can impulse to help the other fellow first."^^ 

3. Generosity, open-handedness in the sharing of small 
luxuries and personal possessions. 

"I find few soldiers or workers who don't magnify this. 
They point out that the hoarding is unnecessary when 
more is so easily had, and that it is hardly decent to pre- 
tend personal necessity when the supply is so readily 
restored. A number of thoughtful men have commented 
on the curious feeling they had of an abundant supply 
somewhere which might at any time reach them covering 
their possible need." 

4. Persistent cheerfulness, "a core of impenetrable 
cheerfulness beneath a coat of purely linguistic grous- 
ing."38 



^ Chaplain T. E. Swann, in The CInirchman. 

^ W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time, " Atlantic Monthly. 



46 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

5. Straightforwardness, not so much strict honesty as 
squareness and hatred of sham. 

6. Humility, compatible with great boastfulness as 
regards the unit. 

7. Loyalty, especially to the unit. 

8. Devotion to home and mother, 

"The word home stands for another great spiritual 
reality to the soldier. In trying hours his family ties have 
taken on a new strength and been invested with a new 
preciousness. Memories of home, the consciousness of 
bonds of affection that link him to members of his 
family, this sense of family interdependence with its 
fears as well as its hopes, mean more to the average sol- 
dier than either patriotism or religion. To speak of home 
to the soldier is to be assured of an immediate response. 
Over and over again I have seen the eyes of soldiers in 
hospitals brim over and their faces glow with smiles of 
delight and pride when I have spoken to them of parents, 
wife and children. Family photographs are erected into 
shrines of worship at the bedside of the wounded. Let- 
ters come like answers to prayer. It is in what his home 
means to him that the soldier finds the chief sources of 
the fountain at which his spirit is renewed. "^^ 

*T have a feeling that the influence of the home upon 
the soldier has not been sufficiently stressed. It was his 
sheet anchor, and the powerful magnet which irresistibly 
drew him back to his native land. It would be safe to 
say that as an influence it affected the life and purpose of 
the average soldier more than the Church. In the home 
the mother was the central figure." 

"The qualities generally hated indicate the same stan- 
dard: Cowardice, closefistedness, snobbishness, swell- 
headedness, hypocrisy, disloyalty, meanness." 

The chaplains would not claim that all men had these 
qualities or that men carried them out in all their impli- 
cations. What they do claim is that these are virtues 
which the averasre American man admires in others.*" 



** Chaplain J. S. Dancey, in The Northwestern Christian Advocate. 

** "Somewhere in the list ought to be put a virtue which soldiers espe- 
cially praise in their officers and try to copy in themselves, namely, getting 
things done, no matter how. It is of the nature of persistency, of single- 
mindedness." 



MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE 47 

They constitute his moral ideal. And average men in 
great numbers, met by the demands of army life and war, 
showed that they had the elements of these virtues in 
their own make-up. The war did not produce these 
virtues — it simply revealed them to us as never before. 

Any attempt to account for these virtues decisively is 
rather futile. To call them "Christian" may readily mis- 
lead. All would probably agree that though "there is 
little conscious and articulate Christianity at the front, 
yet there are profoundly Christian characteristics in 
what men are and do and endure, who have never known 
or do not understand or have forgotten the Christian 
religion."*^ These are virtues which Christ approved 
and exalted and lived. If men do not know that these 
are Christian virtues it is a tragedy, and a 'judgment' 
upon us in the Church. "But from a generalization 
which is concerned with the basis of the character of 
the majority, conscious Christianity must, however re- 
gretfully, be left almost entirely out of account. "^^ 
Some will see in that character the influence of Christian 
homes, and of a consciously Christian environment. 
Others will explain it as the product of military training. 
Still others will see in it an expression of that "Light 
which lighteth every man coming into the world." To 
disentangle the strands of Christian influence, military 
training, and original human nature is an impossible task. 
The important fact for the Church is that under the 
conditions of war men showed the elements of great 
Christian virtues, though not motivated by any conscious 
allegiance to Christ.*^ 



« N. S. Talbot, "Thoughts on Religion at the Front." 

*^ G. Gordon, "Papers from Picardy." 

** "We may dare to say that we have been allowed to see the radiant out- 
shining of that 'Light which lighteth every man coming into the world' in 
the almost universal unselfishness, the ready eagerness to sacrifice self, the 
amazing spirit of cheerful endurance of hardship under every conceivable 
circumstance of trial which has characterized the bearing of men of all 
ranks in the Army and Navy. The quality of the material is indeed mag- 
nificent beyond words. Still it remains true that of religion as a life of 
conscious union with God they know little or nothing." (Report on Chap- 
lains' Replies to Lord Bishop of Kensington.) 

"There are in them excellences and simple heroisms which make it plain 
that Christianity is no artificial thing superimposed on human nature, but is 
the laying bare and setting free of its inmost native quality." Neville S. 
Talbot. 



48 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

VICES OR MORAL WEAKNESSES FREQUENTLY 
FOUND AND LARGELY CONDONED 

The same caution that needs to be observed in judging 
the moral virtues of the average man in civil life by the 
character he showed in war must be applied to his vices 
and moral weaknesses. The form and extent they 
assumed in the army were often the result of abnormal 
conditions. A discussion of the effect of the war and 
military training on moral standards and life will be 
found in Section II of this report. This section is con- 
cerned not with the effect of the war but with what 
contact with the army revealed concerning the moral 
weaknesses of an average group of American men. 

As to the vices and moral weaknesses found in the 
army there is very general agreement. The differences of 
opinion are as to the actual extent and seriousness of 
certain of them. The following reports are typical : 

"The obvious weaknesses are foul talk, swearing, 
gambling, drinking, and immorality. Fundamentally 
their weaknesses are those that come from immature 
character. They still impulsively respond to immediate 
environment. They don't dominate or control. The 
present bulks large and often makes them forget those 
distant things which down in their hearts they know are 
best." 

"The sins which a soldier spurns are not wine, women, 
cards, and cursing." 

"We've been criticized as an army as being smokers, 
swearers, and gamblers. There is truth in it. Nearly all 
our men did all of these things." 

"As regards the general moral tone of the officers and 
men of the A. E. F. — much profanity and an interesting 
frankness in regard to sex cohabitation." 

"I have found that the moral standards of the strong- 
minded, capable old army non-commissioned officer are 
the standards that tend more and more to prevail. The 
old sergeant has very liberal and tolerant views on 
drinking, gambling, profanity, vulgarity in speech, non- 
church attendance, association with prostitutes, and so 
on. If he does condemn any of these practices he con- 



MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE 49 

demns them on the ground that they are fooHsh, not that 
they are wrong." 

"We've had six Y. M. C. A. preachers here in the last 
two weeks," one of the men said to me. "They've been 
joy-riding up and down the Hnes, preaching to us about 
the dangers of booze, women, and gambling. And it's the 
holy truth. Judge, we're so sore than every one of us is 
feeling like having a hell of a time with all three the first 
leave we get."** 

"They have very lax ideas about drunkenness and 
sexual irregularity, but they have very strict ideas about 
the sacredness of social obligations within the groups to 
which they belong. I would mention sheer fear of public 
opinion as one of the great weaknesses of the men. They 
would rather be in fashion than be right. "*^ 

"They believe that morality is all right for those who 
can or care to live up to it, most of them feel that they 
can't and that it would spoil the fun of life if they could. 
They believe in being square, in telling the truth, and not 
cheating when they gamble ; on the other hand, they 
believe in 'Good Business,' the essence of which as far as 
I can make out is not getting caught. They seem to have 
little conception of social justice or of morality in its 
larger sense. They have never heard of the British Labor 
Party's proposals. Social arrangements should be such 
that business will be prosperous." 

In summary it may be said that impurity, obscene 
and profane language, and gambling appear in practically 
all reports. Petty stealing is frequently mentioned. 
Drunkenness, lack of moral courage, "looking out for 
number one," lack of social morality in the large sense, 
are occasionally set down. 

Sexual Immorality. There are two groups of statistics 
to which one naturally turns for an index of the prev- 
alence of sexual immorality — the venereal rate and the 
prophylaxis rate.*® 



" Judge Ben Lindsey, "Doughboy's Religion," Cosmopolitan. 

*>> Sherwood Eddy, "With Our Soldiers in France." 

*• An interesting non-statistical estimate of the situation is reported by a. 
member of tiie Committee. "One of our men in France throughout the war 
in a position which gave him special opportunity for observation, told me 
that he had checked his own observations by conferences with others and 
estimated that 20 per cent of our men in the army in France were incor- 
ruptible and 20 per cent more were utterly corrupt and that the 60 per cent 



50 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

Since venereal diseases are "communicated for the 
most part by illicit sexual intercourse and chiefly by pros- 
titution, their prevalence is a rough measure of the failure 
of education and other social influences to secure control 
of the sex impulse on the part of the male popula- 
tion."*'' But the venereal rate must be interpreted 
with considerable care. As Colonel Snow of the Medical 
Corps points out in his article on "Venereal Disease Con- 
trol in the Army," "There has been much unintentional 
misinterpretation of the venereal disease figures of the 
army owing to a failure to understand the method 
through which the annual rate for a given week or month 
is obtained. All cases discovered and recorded for the 
first time in a given week are multiplied by 52, as an 
annual rate is desired instead of a weekly rate, and 
divided by the total number of men in thousands to ob- 
tain the rate per thousand. Thus if one man in a group 
of a thousand men was found to have venereal disease in 
a given week, the annual venereal rate per thousand 
would be 52 per thousand and it would be a grave error 
to quote the figures in such a way as to give the impres- 
sion that 52 infected men had been discovered in a thou- 
sand in one week."*® The figure 52 would merely indi- 
cate that at that rate — one case a week — 52 cases of 
venereal disease would appear among a thousand men in 
a year. These figures may be read in such a way as to 
exaggerate the evil greatly. 

On the other hand, the venereal rate in the army should 
not be taken as an adequate index of the extent of sexual 
immorality among young men in civil life. It is the 
result of a study of men living under extraordinary 
repressive and protective measures, and the number of 
cases appearing among a thousand men per year is 
probably less than they would show in civil Hfe. 



in between were amenable to the influences which drew them either way. I 
mentioned the estimate to a Canadian soldier and he said he would make 
the proportion 30-30." 

« Surgeon General's Report, Tune 30, 1918. 

*8 William F. Snow. M.D., "Venereal Disease Control in the Army. 



MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE 51 

The annual rate of admissions for venereal disease per 
thousand based on reports to the Surgeon General for the 
twelve-week period, September 21 to December 7, 1917, 
when large numbers of civilians were being inducted into 
service, was as follows : 

Regular Army ' 88,0 

National Guard 115.2 

National Army 162.4 

Average 121.9 

"The National Army, more than either of the others, is 
a cross section of the physique and character of the men 
of this country. "^^ In this typical cross section, at the 
rate above, 162 cases would appear in a year among a 
thousand men. Presumably the same men would not be 
liable to develop disease more than once in a year. The 
figures may therefore he interpreted as meaning that 
approximately 162 per thousand, or 16 per cent of draft 
men would be venereal at some time in a given year. It 
would not, however, be correct to infer that 162 new 
cases would appear in a thousand men every year; for 
we must not forget that these drafted men brought with 
them into the army an accumulation of venereal disease 
contracted during several years. 

The United States Public Health Service has recently 
issued figures giving "The Percentage of Venereal Dis- 
eases among Approximately the Second Million Drafted 
Men — by Cities. "^° These figures are based on an 
examination upon arrival in mobilization camps, and 
include only obvious cases of syphilis, gonorrhea, and 
chancroid. They vary for the several cities listed from 
.82 per cent to 27.45 per cent of the men inducted into 
service, with 5.4 per cent as an average. The fact that 
these figures indicate the cases active at a given time 
rather than the proportion of cases developing in a year 
presumably accounts for their being so much lower than 



*• Rt. Rev. William Lawrence, "Venereal Disease in the Army, Navy, 
and Community." 

■"O Issued by the Treasury Department. V. D. No. 47. 



52 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

those referred to above. It has also to be borne in mind 
that these figures measure only the cases among the men 
who arrived at camps and take no account of men who 
had already been rejected by the local draft boards for 
various causes, including venereal diseases. 

The venereal rate is a rough index of the situation, but 
is not the true thermometer of the moral situation in an 
army. "It may simply indicate scientific skill in evading 
the consequences of sexual looseness. The prophylactic 
rate in connection with the venereal rate is a truer gauge. 
The former indicates the men who did not escape physical 
penalties. The latter shows those who have been morally 
guilty and have had recourse to prophylaxis."^^ 

However, the prophylactic rate as ordinarily reported 
is even more difficult to use as a gauge of the moral situa- 
tion than the venereal rate. It is figured in the same 
way, by multiplying the weekly rate per thousand by 
52 to secure an annual rate. But the possibility of fre- 
quent repetitions by an individual man enters in to 
confuse the problem. Thus it is theoretically con- 
ceivable that a single individual might receive a prophy- 
laxis for every week in the year, thus bringing the rate 
per thousand up to 52. In the article by Colonel Snow, 
already referred to, several charts giving the annual 
prophylactic rate per thousand, based on the experience 
in camps in this country, are included. They show the 
rate occasionally rising to 600 and 800. Such records 
are vivid evidence of the eflfectiveness of prophylaxis in 
reducing disease and of educational repressive measures 
in reducing illicit sexual intercourse, but they give Httle 
information as to the proportions of immorality. Sixteen 
men out of a thousand receiving prophylaxis during a 
given week would raise the annual rate for that week 
above 800. 

Mr. Raymond Fosdick has given figures on prophy- 
laxis which show how widely the rate varied according 



■^ Chaplain Brent's Report to the Adjutant General. 



MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE 53 

to local conditions. "In one body of 7,401 troops belong- 
ing to various branches of the service, with an average 
of seven weeks in France, only 56 prophylactic treat- 
ments were given and only one case of venereal disease 
developed ; during two months in France, one infantry 
regiment of 3,267 men had a record of only eleven 
prophylactic treatments and no new cases of disease."^^ 
On the other hand the following figures on the situa- 
tion in a base port, at a time when the houses of prostitu- 
tion were running wide open and were frequented in 
large numbers by our troops, show a very different 
condition. 



Month Number of Troops 


Prophylaxes 


Disease Cases 


August 4,571 


1,669 


72 


September 9,471 


3,392 


124 


October 3,966 


2,074 


67 



Here again the cases of prophylaxis cannot be identi- 
fied with the number of men receiving treatment; 2,074 
prophylaxes do not equal 2,074 men. For example, 900 
men of whom 300 received four prophylaxes a month, 
300 received two prophylaxes a month, and 300 received 
one prophylaxis a month would account for 2,100 treat- 
ments. Nevertheless, such a prophylactic rate represents 
a very large amount of sexual immorality. 

From such data as this it is clearly impossible to draw 
very accurate conclusions as to the moral situation. It 
appears that not less than 5^ per cent of men of draft 
age throughout the United States have venereal disease 
at a given time, that some 16 per cent are liable to be 
venereal at some time during a year, and that given a bad 
moral environment the number who succumb is very 
large. 

To date it has not been possible to secure figures giv- 
ing the actual proportions of men in a given number 

"' From an article in The New Republic. The figures are given in sup- 
port of the proposition that it is "possible for men living constantly together 
m large groups to be sexually continent and at the same time healthy and 
contented." 



54 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

who received prophylaxis at some time during an ex- 
tended period. Such figures would be the most accurate 
index of sexual immorality. 

Obscenity and Profanity. Obscenity and profanity 
were very prevalent in the army. The following are 
fairly typical of replies received on this topic : 

"Swearing has grown steadily worse and taken on an 
added picturesqueness as the days have gone by. One 
interesting observation is that where the officers have 
behaved like gentlemen and maintained obedience with- 
out cussing, the men have been quick to follow the fine 
example set by the officers. The stream of profanity in 
the average outfit is overwhelming. All attempt by chap- 
lains and auxiliary agencies to stem the tide have met 
with little success." 

"Obscenity has been such that men have deliberately 
gone out from the barracks to escape it. Conditions have 
varied in companies but in many places the self-respecting 
have a terrible struggle to keep their ideals." 

"They hear and use a lot of rough, profane, unmoral 
language. They jest about things that are unclean and 
sacred. They tell smutty stories and sing ribald songs." 

Gambling. Gambling was very general both among 
officers and men, for large stakes and small, in home 
camps, S. O. S., and on shipboard. "One must say with 
great regret that gambling was the prevailing vice of 
officers in virtually every group touched. No one thing 
has been more commented upon regarding the evils of 
official life in the A. E. F. than this." 

Drunkenness. Drunkenness was rare in the army by 
necessity and as a result little moral significance can be 
given to any report upon it. Liquor was practically 
not available in the home camps and in many locations 
in France. Where it was easily procured, especially in 
conjunction with much idleness, as after the armistice, 
there was occasionally and locally considerable drunken- 
ness. It is fair to say that drunkenness is one of the 
moral weaknesses which men do not consider very bad. 



MORAL STANDARDS AND LIFE 55 

These are vices or moral weaknesses which average 
men readily condone in the army and probably condone 
in civil life. To condone does not mean to approve. 
They are not part of the average man's ideal of life. He 
does not out and out believe in them. But they are not 
so very bad, he thinks, at least not so wrong as the par- 
sons think.^^ 

It is encouraging that from an intimate contact with 
these average men with their mingled virtues and vices 
so many have come to a renewed faith in human nature 
and its possibilities. 

"From that area, in which the most foolish and wicked 
of all man's activities was in full swing, I yet brought 
back a new faith in human nature." 

"It is not that the war has failed to produce heroes, so 
much as that it has produced heroism in a torrent. The 
great man of the war is the common man. It becomes 
ridiculous to pick out particular names. The acts of the 
multitudinous heroes forbid the setting up of effigies. 
When I was a young man I imitated Swift and posed 
for cynicism. I will confess that now at fifty, and greatly 
helped by this war, I have fallen in love with mankind."^* 

"In crises the rich man, the poor man, the thief, the 
harlot, the preacher, the teacher, the laborer, the ignorant, 
the wise, all go to death for something that defies death — 
something immortal in the human spirit. Those truck- 
drivers, those mule-whackers, those common soldiers, 

^^ Norman MacLean makes a comment which is of great interest in this 
connection. Probably it would apply equally well to the American army. 

"A curious fact is the lofty standard in the direction of self-control 
which they demand from chaplains. The most typical 'old soldier,' with 
a possibly highly colored record, will become a severe critic of a padre who 
fails to set an example in these matters. An acute observer remarked that 
this_ universal attitude is due to an appreciation of metier. A soldier's 
business is to be brave; a solicitor's to be trustworthy; and a clergyman's 
to be good. And inasmuch as self-mastery is an essential element in good- 
ness, it is demanded of the chaplain. The fact of the demand indicates the 
depth of the appreciation that goodness is not achieved without this faculty. 
Perhaps, too, their wistful desire to achieve it for themselves makes them 
demand that the official refiresentatives of religion shall prove in practice 
that its achievement is possible. A failure by the chaplains may do some- 
thing to dim a half-understood hope. However, the fact is there; and from 
it we may at least infer that the standards of private life, common to all 
branches of the Church, and to all Christian times, will not be deposed, as 
ideals, by the men who bear arms." 

"Men expect you to set an example; they want you to be different from 
them but they_ don't want you to think that you are." (Bishop Brent's 
Report as Senior Chaplain.) 

" H. G. Wells. 



56 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

that doctor, these college men on the ambulance are 
brothers in the democracy of courage. "^^ 

"So heart-breaking and yet so inspiring has been this 
massive heroism of the common rank and file of men, 
that one does not wonder that it has begotten a new 
religious faith and led one like H. G. Wells to say on the 
one hand, 'Our sons have shown us God,' and Dr. T. P. 
Forsyth on the other hand, 'God has shown us our 
sons.' "^« 



w William Allen White. 

"• Henry Churchill King, "For a New America in a New World." 



SUMMARY OF PART I 

Let us now attempt a brief gathering up of what we 
have learned concerning the state of reHgion in the United 
States from our investigation of that cross section of 
American male humanity that we called the army. But 
let us at the same time remember that for a large part 
of our data any definite generaUzation is impossible. 

1. The number of men in the army who expressed 
themselves as having no religious faith was negligible. 
The great majority of men were nominally Christians 
and a large proportion had some Church connection. But 
the number who were conscious Christians and in active, 
vital connection with the Church was relatively small. 

2. Probably the most outstanding fact that emerges 
from our investigation is the widespread ignorance as to 
the meaning of Christianity and misunderstanding of the 
fundamentals of Christian faith and life — and that not 
only among men outside the Church but also among those 
nominally in its membership. It is evident that the 
Church has seriously failed as a teacher of religion. 

3. Although the great majority of men were not con- 
sciously Christians and not in vital connection with the 
Church there is abundant evidence that there were thou- 
sands who were motivated by loyalty to Christ, who had 
a definite relationship to the Church and who bore un- 
mistakable witness to the reality and power of the Chris- 
tian faith. 

4. The consciousness of denominational differences 
among Protestant laymen was very slight. The charac- 
teristic attitude was not so much one of conscious criti- 
cism of denominational lines as of indiflference to them 



58 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

and practical ignoring of them. There was very Httle 
demand for distinctively denominational ministrations or 
services. 

5. Criticisms of the Church for inadequacy in its 
moral life were fairly common along the following lines : 
that the salvation preached by the Churches is narrowly 
selfish, that Christianity is presented as a collection of 
"don'ts," that even if the moral standards of the Church 
are right its members are not particularly distinguishable 
for their all-round goodness, that the Church does not 
manifest the spirit of brotherhood of which it talks. 

6. The Church was also criticized on the ground of 
the unreality or triviality of its work along the following 
lines : that it is concerned about things far removed from 
the real business of life, that it emphasizes unimportant 
matters such as services and ritual, that its "doings" seem 
trivial or routine. 

7. The great majority of men have some religious 
ideas, but they are dim and vague. Here it is particularly 
difficult to generalize but the following tendencies seem 
to be fairly clear : 

(a) Religion is regarded as primarily a matter of 
deeds rather than of belief or worship. 

(b) There is almost universally a belief in God and 
in immortality but neither conception has definitely Chris- 
tian content. It is a vague notion of the general benefi- 
cence of the universe rather than faith in the God and 
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. 

(c) So far as men think of Christ it is with feelings 
of respect, but to great numbers He is only a dim figure 
of the past far removed from their present interests and 
needs. 

(d) The sense of sinfulness and of need of "salva- 
tion" is relatively infrequent. 

8. The general eflPect of contact with the men, with 



SUMMARY OF PART I 59 

their mingled virtues and moral weaknesses, has been to 
renew faith in the possibilities of human nature. 

(a) Under the stress of war men showed the elements 
of great Christian virtues, even though not largely mo- 
tivated by conscious allegiance to Christ. The following 
virtues were generally admired and widely found : cour- 
age, unselfishness, generosity, straightforwardness, hu- 
mility, loyalty, devotion to home and mother. 

(b) The following vices were widely found and 
largely condoned: sexual immorality, profanity, obscen- 
ity, and gambling. 

The effect of military training and war upon religion 
will be considered in subsequent chapters of this volume. 



PART II 

THE EFFECT OF THE WAR ON 
RELIGION IN THE ARMY 



INTRODUCTION 

The question as to the effect of the war on the religious 
Hfe of men in the army has certainly received much 
more emphasis in current discussions than the disclosure 
that the war has made as to the religious life and thought 
of the average man. It is a subject that arouses greater 
curiosity. But it is not true that this wider interest 
necessarily indicates a greater importance. What we are 
able to learn concerning the state of religion among the 
men inducted into the service has much more to teach us 
as to what the Church should do than the changes which 
may have been worked in some of them by war or mili- 
tary training. In so far as the conclusions of Part I are 
sound they are suggestive of the religious situation 
among the mass of American men. The direct effects of 
army life and war were confined to the four million odd 
who were in service, and any radical changes to only a 
part of them.^ 

It is natural that the attempt to determine the effects 
of army life upon religion should call forth great dif- 
ferences of opinion, for the effects varied according to 
the different areas in which the men were distributed. 
There were four main areas into which the army carried 
men: (1) the home training camps in this country; (2) 
the back areas or Service of Supply in France; (3) the 
combat areas or Zone of Advance in France; (4) the 
hospitals. It is worth while to recall the main influences 

^ "In the calculation of future tendencies in the social, political, or reli- 
gious spheres after the war, it is the easiest thing in the world to forget 
that 'when the boys come home' it is only a bare majority of them to whom 

most of what we have been saying will apply The war has brought, 

broadly speaking, only two influences to bear on the whole soldier manhood 
of our country: (a) the demand for self-sacrifice in a righteous cause; (b) 
Army life and discipline." T. W. Pym, "Papers from Picardy." 



64 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

that were brought to bear on the men within these vari- 
ous areas. 

1. The Home Training Camps. 

a. Separation from home, depending of course 
on distance. 

b. A sudden break with the habits, associations 
and occupations of civil life. 

c. An exclusively male community, cf. school or 
college. 

d. Lack of privacy. 

e. Military discipline and instruction. 
/. The expectation of active service. 

g. A large measure of protective and recrea- 
tional work. 

h. Active religious work by welfare agencies, 
camp pastors, and chaplains. 

3. The Service of Supply in France. 

a. A more complete separation from home. 
h. Foreign environment, customs, standards. 
c, d, e. As above. 

/. Frequently no great risk or expectation of 
active service and generally monotonous tasks. 
g. Much less protective and recreational work. 
h. Frequently less favorable physical conditions. 
i. Less religious work. 

3. Zone of Advance. 

a. Prevalence of danger and death. 

h. Mental and physical discomfort and suffering, 

c. Excitation of combat. 

d. Weariness. 

e. Experience of mutual dependence and physi- 
cal helplessness. 

/. Chaplains. The chaplain became increasingly 
prominent, and his religious function stood out 
more clearly in combat areas and hospitals. 



INTRODUCTION 65 

4, Hospitals. 

a. Physical "let-down" of sickness and rest. 

b. Quietness and the opportunity for reflection. 

c. Women. 

d. Prevalence of sufifering and death. 

e. Chaplains. 

In addition to these main influences there were many 
purely local conditions that did much to determine the 
effect — e.g., the character and standards of commanding 
officers, the caliber of the chaplain and local welfare 
workers, the predominant tone of the men, the moral 
environment of the community. Add to this the fact that 
conditions were very different before and after the 
armistice, with the complete shift of interests and the 
increase of idleness and restlessness, and it is easy to 
realize that all ready generalization as to the religious 
effect of the war on men in general is quite impossible. 
In considering any reported change all these factors have 
to be taken into account. 

The following quotations from chaplains will empha- 
size the importance of bearing these diverse conditions 
in mind : 

"The changes made by the war vary according to loca- 
tion. The boys who remained in the camps in the States 
suffered separation from home and relatives ; those who 
came across the seas and remained in the Service of Sup- 
ply had added to this experience that of touch with a 
strange people with strange customs in a strange land; 
while the lads who were at the battle front had added 
experiences which registered intenser reactions." 

"At the front, there is a certain moral excitation. Even 
if it is not religious in its accent, it has carrying power 
which takes many a man over rough places and affords a 
point of contact on which the chaplain may stress his 
message. He will rarely find this note in a Base Section. 
It is in the Service of Supply, however, that most of 
the A. E. F. are doing their work. The Service, for the 
majority of the men, is humdrum and uninteresting. 



66 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

The conditions under which officers and men are working 
are abnormal. There is little of the appeal to ideals and 
even decencies which comes with family life and home 
conditions."^ 

"It may have been true, as many observers have said, 
that during the war the soldier was unselfish and gener- 
ous. But certainly after the armistice — which is the only 
period I know anything about — nothing of the sort was 
true of the men with whom I was stationed in France." 

With these considerations in mind we take up the 
various eflfects of the war on religion as discussed in the 
reports that have come to us. It is convenient to deal 
with them under three headings : 

The Effect of the War on Personal Religion — Faith 
and Practice. 

The Effect on the Church and Churchmanship. 

The Effect on Moral Life and Standards. 



* Chaplain Brent's Report to the Adjutant General. 



CHAPTER V 

THE EFFECT OF MILITARY TRAINING AND 
WAR ON PERSONAL RELIGION 

In view of the diversity of conditions and the conflict 
of reports it would be futile and premature to attempt 
any statement as to whether the total effect on personal 
religion has been favorable or unfavorable. We do not 
know. The witnesses differ very widely in their judg- 
ment. A considerable group believe that considering the 
men as a whole there has been no great change in either 
direction. The following are typical of such an opinion : 

"I confess I cannot see the change some men say they 
see. 

"The answers [to a questionnaire sent to pastors in 
Bloomington inquiring about the returned soldiers] were 
unanimous in the belief that the men were not much 
changed."^ 

"The fifth question in a questionnaire distributed 
among officers was, 'Does army life make you more 
religious or less?' Out of the fifty-six questionnaires 
filled out, thirty-five left this question unanswered. 
Eleven said, 'Neither.' Six thought it made them more 
religious and four thought it made them less so. It is a 
fair presumption to believe that the thirty-five who failed 
to answer this question did not recognize any definite 
change in their religious life due to army conditions."* 

"The religious condition of the men in the line was 
just the same as one finds it at home, — with the veneering 
taken off." 

"Do not think that the war had very much effect on 
the religious life of the men generally." 

"On the whole men are going to be less markedly 
different after a few months in France than most people 

* Edgar D. Jones, in The Christian Century. 

* Edwin A. McAlpin, Jr., in The Presbyterian Advance. 



68 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

think. There are very few people upon whom the war 
has had a revolutionary effect." 

"So far as religion is concerned there is little change. 
Those who were religious before the war are the ones 
who are now of that type. Those who were not are not 
now. Of course, for both of these classes some men have 
been chosen." 

Of those who believe the total effect of army life to 
have been conducive to religion the following are repre- 
sentative : 

"In reference to personal religious experience, all 
except one thought it had been deepened and made more 
real by war, and all feel that soldiers will go back stronger 
men and more valuable to the community for high ends. 
Some confessed a lapse into a lower plane of living."^ 

"I think there has been a deepening of religious experi- 
ence as they have been bi:ought face to face with the most 
serious issues of life." 

"If that be the heart and essence of religion, then with- 
out any hesitation whatever, I would say that our men 
by thousands and tens of thousands have found religion. 
They have been answering with the best they had to the 
voice of the best they knew." 

"After having eaten with these men, marched with 
them, lived with them for eighteen months, under condi- 
tions which they hated, in circumstances which they 
loathed, I believe that the majority of them are spiritu- 
ally better men than when they came over." 

On the other hand there are many views such as these : 

"More have fallen from their ideal than have risen to 
a higher level." 

"War itself has never made men religious and never 
will. Some who had religion will have lost it, and a very 
few may have found it." 

"While the good effects of a war are seen more clearly 
after it is over, certainly during the war the vast majority 
of men at the front would almost unanimously agree that 
the preponderatory influence and effect for the time being 
is evil."*' 

"Here and there one has had a spiritual life deepened 

° Report on Conference of sixty-five enlisted men in "Y" hut overseas. 
• Sherwood Eddy, "With Our Soldiers in France." 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 69 

by what he has seen and experienced but the great ma- 
jority have felt the awful blight and deterioration of 
war." 

"The majority of officers and men have suffered incal- 
culable spiritual loss during these terrible months. Reli- 
gion was for the time being quite neglected if not forgot- 
ten. As for prayers and devotion — well it is easy to build 
up an ideal story on the basis of a few isolated cases. 
Back in the S. O. S. the same was true to a less degree. 
There temptations were multiplied and many men threw 
away former restraints. Religion had more chance to 
assert itself, but there also religion suffered. The ten- 
dency was to lose ground." 

Manifestly we have no scale of values by which to 
weigh the results. How would we weigh a momentary 
and thrilling experience of dependence on God against a 
breakdown of normal religious habits? How balance a 
perhaps temporary increase in certain types of unselfish- 
ness against a perhaps temporary increase in sexual 
immorality? Which is to count for more, an intense 
spiritual experience among a few or a general hardening 
of the sensibilities of many, a freshened assurance of 
immortality or a lessened sense of fundamental moral 
alternatives? If one says that the war fostered or hin- 
dered religion, it is necessary to ask what phase of reli- 
gion he means, in which circumstances of war it was true, 
and what remains after these peculiar circumstances 
have ceased to exist. 

GENERAL EFFECT ON INTEREST IN RELIGION 

Whatever may be our judgment as to the total effect 
of the war on the religion of men in the army it is cer- 
tainly true that in all the military areas there were situa- 
tions or occasions which "made men think" — not think 
through, but question. This was particularly true at the 
times of crisis such as enlistment, call, embarkation, ad- 
vance to the front, preparation for attack, and being 
wounded. No doubt the routine of army life is in the 
main deadening to serious reflection. But certain occa- 



70 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

sions are stimulating. Any sudden change of life or 
breakdown of the accustomed tends to make the more 
thoughtful reconsider. It becomes less easy to take life 
and its routine for granted. 

"There are men, and I believe not a few, in whom the 
doing of this one deed [enlistment] deflects the whole 
balance of existence into generous and devoted ways. 
An abrupt release from self -absorption has for most 
human beings the force of a discovery."^ 

The period of adjustment at least stirs questions in 
many minds and the expectation and prevalence of death 
naturally stir men to a hasty review of their own lives. 

"Death is a great teacher; from him men learn what 
are the things they really value."* 

The fundamental questions come to the surface. And 
in so far as religion offers answers theoretical or practical 
to life's fundamental questions, some turning to religion 
must be expected. It is not uncommon for chaplains to 
report that they believe that many men are returning 
from active combat quickened in religious interest. 

"The men who arrive from overseas seem generally to 
be in a more thoughtful frame of mind than a similar 
cross section of men from home." 

This does not necessarily mean, however, that they 
are more religious, only more serious or thoughtful. 

"Being serious and being religious are two very differ- 
ent qualities. One furnishes very splendid soil for the 
cultivation of the other : and good soil is primarily what 
the soldier is bringing back to America."^ 

Perhaps it cannot be safely asserted that the average 
soldier is returning a more serious man, but at any rate 
there were many occasions which made him temporarily 
more serious. In some places chaplains noted very dis- 
tinct fluctuations of religious interest. One, writing of 
his experience in a home training camp, speaks of "the 



^ W. E. Hocking, in Atlantic Monthly. 

* Donald Hankey, "Student in Arms." 

• Orlo C. Brown, in The Christian Advocate. 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 71 

distinct and unmistakable religious reactions which accom- 
panied an overseas movement of the troops. I was sta- 
tioned at Camp Merritt at the time with most favorable 
opportunities for contact with the men. Without excep- 
tion I found them thinking deeply. They were not only 
open to approach, but invited and sought religious in- 
struction and help. Equally as obvious is the unmistak- 
able subsidence of the tide of religious interest since the 
cessation of hostilities." 

In addition to these occasional stirrings of the religious 
interest, many men in the army came under the influence 
of religious workers. The same publicity which un- 
doubtedly militated against religion in other directions 
made it a public function. Services were held in the local 
club (i.e., the "Y") or in the village square or in the hos- 
pital ward. The chaplain was not only a religious worker 
but an official of the organization to which every man 
belonged. The Y. M. C. A. both by necessity and by 
intention often combined religious appeal with recreation 
or entertainment.^*' Whatever the total effect may have 
been, it is unquestionably true that many men were 
"exposed" to religious ideas and religious conviction who 
had been long out of reach of them. 

"The soldier had religion thrust upon his attention in 
all kinds of ways and by agencies too numerous and well- 
known to catalogue." "The regular chaplain's services 
brought many 'to church' who had not been in the habit 
of going and I believe there was some thinking stimulated 
in the minds of the men." 

One needs no reports from chaplains to know that 
under such conditions many men whose faith was latent 
or untried found a more conscious and active faith. It 
is analogous to the heightening of physical life in the 
face of danger or unusual effort. War called for self- 
control, disinterestedness, self-surrender, trust, faith ; 



^^ "The Triangle Team was advertised not to do evangelistic work as it 
is usually called, but to give the men a jolly song hour followed by a straight 
talk on subjects that would interest them." 



72 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

and where men had been trained to look for these things 
in reHgion, they naturally looked more earnestly. "In a 
large number of cases, religion has become a more real 
concern of life, and personal faith has been deepened and 
strengthened." 

"I have seen in these weeks at least one hundred men 
whose faces beamed with the joy of a new found faith 
and whose words testified to their awakened knowledge 
of the love of God." 

Beyond this heightening of religious life among many 
of that minority who went into war definitely religious, 
there was undoubtedly in home camps and hospitals and 
leave-areas a considerable body of formal new decisions 
or conversions. Dr. Kelman, in his Yale Lectures on 
Preaching, speaking of his experiences with British 
troops, said there were many instances of a sharply de- 
fined experience of conversion and went on to say, 
"These, I think, were for the most part connected with 
sudden reversions to the religious experiences of child- 
hood." The same would probably hold for our own 
forces ; but it must be remembered that "many instances" 
does not mean overwhelming numbers. 

Of course, we have reports which deal in large figures. 
One Y. M. C. A. worker, speaking of an evangelistic tour, 
writes : "Tens of thousands of men dedicated themselves 
to God in this open manner in the presence of their com- 
rades. Afterwards very many signed the war roll cards, 
pledging allegiance to Christ," The words which he 
called upon the men to utter were these : "I hereby dedi- 
cate my manhood to God and to country and to home. 
May God help me to keep my vow." Sherwood Eddy 
describes an evangelistic meeting of the type common 
in the camps both in this country and in France : 

"We have had them forty minutes now and many a 
man is listening as for his life. We hold up the pledge 
card of the war roll. 'How many of you are willing to 
take your stand against drink, gambling, and impurity? 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 73 

To break away from sin and to sign the war roll which 
says "I pledge my allegiance to the Lord Jesus Christ as 
my Saviour and King, by God's help to fight his battles 
and bring victory to his kingdom"? Who will take his 
stand for Christ and sign tonight?' Here and there all 
over the house men begin to rise. A hundred come 
forward to get cards and sign them." 

A Methodist camp pastor writes : "A few nights ago 
I held a service in a *Y' hut. It was packed with men. 
When I gave them an opportunity to decide for Christ, 
it was impossible to count the hands that went up." An 
account in The Standard of the experience of two Baptist 
preachers in France says, "At one of these great meetings 
nearly a thousand men declared their acceptance of Christ 
as a personal Saviour." 

Clearly, however, the raising of the hand, or even the 
signing of a pledge card, cannot be identified with any- 
thing so fundamental or original as conversion. It may 
safely be said that a very large number of the men thus 
expressing themselves were already definitely affiliated 
with some branch of the Church. And anyone familiar 
with evangelistic work realizes that it is often easier for 
a man to raise his hand or give his assent than not to. 
Some of the pledges taken, such as the first mentioned 
above, were closely associated with a general vow of 
loyalty to home and country. As to the value of such 
results sincere Christians will inevitably differ, according 
as they belong to those branches of the Church which 
believe in the great value of open and reiterated decision 
or to those which believe that such expression tends to 
exhaust the religious impulses and deflect energy from 
progressive Christian nurture. There is obviously no 
way of discovering what proportion of such decisions 
were new or how fundamental they were. Whether we 
take such incidents as evidence of a "revival" in the 
army will depend on what we mean. A writer in a 
church paper, arguing against Dr. Fosdick's statement in 
the Atlantic Monthly that there was not a revival of reli- 



74 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

gion at the front, says : "Parents and pastors have enough 
testimonial letters in their possession and a sufficient 
number of returned men are bearing witness to their 
discovery of God, to constitute a fairly large sized revival 
result." But we believe that chaplains in the main would 
agree that there was no large accession to the ranks of 
definite Christianity and no wholesale mass movement 
toward religion. 

Such decisions as were made or renewed, at least under 
the guidance of the Y. M. C. A. appeal, took the form 
in the main of a renunciation of certain vices, such as 
gambling, drinking, and impurity, and a new resolution 
to make Christ the authority in their lives, and serve the 
cause they were fighting for as His. 

The formal new decisions made under the influence or 
guidance of religious workers were mainly confined to 
the home camps, the hospitals, and the back areas in 
France, where active religious work was practicable. In 
the Zone of Advance and perhaps to some extent in other 
areas at times of crisis there were many new resolutions. 
"This sector [the Z. of A.] was the place of vows and 
many new resolutions." Under the pressure of danger 
or in the relief of escape, men resolved henceforth to 
read their Bibles or say their prayers or "be good" or go 
to church. A captain writes in a letter to his mother: 
"A lot of us who have not been exactly angels before 
this affair have made certain resolves that are pretty 
sure to be kept." A hospital chaplain reports: "Every 
day I heard some such statement as this: 'I have never 
had much to do with religion, but I'm going to have 
something to do with it from now on.' " It would, how- 
ever, be an optimist who would expect any very large 
direct gain from such resolutions. Unquestionably, there 
were some that were deep and will bear fruit. But "many 
men who were ready to reveal deep conviction and faith 
while they were in bed and separated from companion- 
ship quickly returned to a hard and indifferent exterior 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 75 

when they were well enough to mingle with other soldiers. 
These and other things constantly raised a question as 
to how far the good influences and good intentions which 
came out under army conditions and in suffering would 
survive when they went back to old surroundings." The 
same observation and the same questions apply also to 
the difference between the combat and the leave areas.^^ 
In the deepened religious life of a few, in the new 
resolutions made by many men and carried back to 
America by some, a good many chaplains find much en- 
couragement. And it cannot be said that in the reports 
received there is much evidence of clear and unmistak- 
able loss. A British chaplain says that he heard many 
times in substance the following bitter caricature of the 
creed: "I believe in God the Father Almighty, and the 
trench mortar has just blown my pal, who was a clean- 
living lad, to pieces ; and God is love, and they crucified 
the sergeant major ; and peace on earth, good will towards 
men, and I stuck my bayonet through his body; and 
Jesus died to save us from sin, and the Boche has been 
raping women ; and this war never ends." Few reports 
of this type of development among American troops have 
come to our attention. Dr. E. D. Jones, in The Christian 
Century, tells of a soldier who, on being asked by a "Y" 
man to join a Bible class, repHed: "Hell, no! that is, 
not now. The Bible teaches us to love our enemies ; let's 
finish up this killing business before we take up Bible 
study again." Another worker quotes a private as 
saying, "There is no place for religion in the life of any 
soldier." And an ofiicer said: "Of course the men are 
worse than when they came over After such train- 
ing life is not held sacred Hell ! How can you 



" C/. T. M. Pym, in "Papers from Picardy": "Close acquaintance with 
death has much to do with their attitude; escape suggests to the reflective 
mood regret for lost opportunities in the past — opportunities for good or evil. 
A man of one kind thanks God for deliverance and leaps at the fresh lease 
of life in which he may use such time as is left him in order to fit himself 
for service in this world and beyond. Another man merely laments that 
he has allowed himself so nearly to pass out with many of the 'joys of life' 
untasted, and determines to make up for lost time in his next leave or after 
the war." 



76 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

kill a man saying to yourself, 1 love your soul'? All 
rot !" This attitude, however, is not commonly reported 
and can hardly be regarded as typical. 

It would be reasonable to expect that men whose reli- 
gion had been largely nominal — a routine of observance 
or a set of inherited explanations — would find in the face 
of war that the routine was ineffective and the explana- 
tions inadequate. And we would suppose that many 
men would feel a tremendous and unsettling conflict 
between the Christian view and way of life and the 
brutalities of war. But chaplains do not often speak of 
these as observed results. 

What some chaplains and some men do feel very 
strongly is that combatant service produced a general 
dulling of sensibilities and lowering of standards which 
more than offset the religious gains. They say that it 
enforced such preoccupation with the elementary physi- 
cal needs, was so raw and hard a life, as seriously to 
threaten the spirit. "Brutalized" is much too strong a 
word for anyone to use in describing the effect of com- 
batant service on the majority of men. Its effect was not 
inevitably nor universally bad. But the easiest way for 
many men to meet its brutalities and coarseness was by 
a quiet "hardening" of the heart and a relaxing of former 
standards of daily life. 

THE EXPERIENCE OF GOD AT THE FRONT 

Many chaplains believe that the experiences of the 
front lines brought many men to a more vivid sense of 
the need and reality of God. There has doubtless been 
exaggeration in the reporting or phrasing of this fact but 
the testimony remains. To say that there were no 
atheists at the front is manifestly overshooting the mark. 
To say that the front was a place where atheism kept 
quiet, where there was little satisfaction in unbelief, 
where men wanted to believe, would be nearer the truth. 
Such a remark as "If a man was not a Christian when 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 77 

he went over the top he would be before he came back," 
is hardly a commendation of Christianity. And such 
remarks as these, made after a remarkable escape, "The 
Old Man must have been with me then," and, 'T sure 
did love the Lord then," do not have the ring of authentic 
religious experience. But allowing for the exaggeration 
of enthusiasm there remain the repeated assertions of 
many chaplains. 

"God's presence has become a fact of experience with 

many of the men who have been in action." 
"Interest has been intensified in a real God." 
"A large number admit a more earnest faith in God." 
"It is a saying at the front that the only soldier who 

doesn't believe in God is the one who has never been 

under shell fire or bombs." 

"A few undoubtedly have been brought closer to God 

as a result of their experiences." 

In the stress of battle men have approached God mainly 
as Companion and Protector. The thought of Him as 
Judge or Saviour does not appear to have been empha- 
sized. It was in their loneliness and entire dependence 
that men sought Him and found Him. "It is noteworthy 
that alike among the men at sea and at the front religious 
feeling is said to take the form not so much of desire for 
salvation as for companionship."^^ "There are moments 
when a touch of searching fear reminds one of the lone- 
liness of every personal self in that vast mill of misery 
and death and one achieves the denial that this apparent 
loneliness is real, because existence itself is a companion- 
ship with an unseen but inescapable will."^^ 

It is some such moment as that which a chaplain 
describes : 

"He was with a well-known artillery regiment in the 
Chateau-Thierry battle. A certain battery occupied a 
position exposed to the fiercest fire of the Boche. At one 
time the C. O. had to send a message to another battery 
posted on an adjoining hill, and called one of the lieu- 

" Archbishops' Third Committee of Inquiry. 

" W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time, " in Atlantic Monthly. 



78 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

tenants to go and straighten out a mix-up that had oc- 
curred. The lieutenant told the chaplain about it next 
day, saying: 'When I looked down that valley it didn't 
seem possible to get through. Shells were bursting so 
fast that the whole valley seemed to be on fire, and it 
looked as if every foot of it was being covered. Well, as 
I started down, I suddenly thought of some words which 
I had heard you read at a funeral the day before, and 
which had impressed me at the time, and as I walked 
along, I said — "Though I walk through the valley of the 
shadow of death I will fear no evil, for thou art with 
me" ; and I felt better. I kept saying those words over 
to myself until I got back. That's twice I've prayed and 
if a man can pray when he's in danger, he can pray when 
he's not. I'm going to be a good sport and begin to say 
my prayers.' "" 

There is no question but that the more common ap- 
proach to God stimulated by battle was through the ex- 
perience of physical dependence and the need for a 
Protector. "I fancy that most men in service take a dip 
at some time or other into piety of a very different sort — 
that of personal safety-seeking. Prayer for most men in 
peril becomes an instinctive petition for personal deliver- 
ance."^^ That there was a great deal of prayer of a sort 
at the front appears to be certain : 

"I have yet to meet the man who does not admit that 
under fire he prayed simply because he could not help it." 

"Certainly there was much prayer in the trenches." 

"As to praying among the soldiers, I saw only one 
fellow praying on his knees in the whole year I have 
been in the army, but when we go up to the front every- 
body prays to himself." (An enlisted man.) 

"Most of them prayed before going over the top. 
Most of them had not prayed before since they were 
little children." 

"If ever I prayed in my life I did when I went over the 
top." (An enHsted man.) 

" Cf. Chaplain Tiplady's story of a young British soldier who, when cut 
off and compelled to wait for five hours in a shell hole for darkness and the 
opportunity to crawl back to his regiment, read Francis Thompson's 
"Hound of Heaven" and in the assurance of God's presence found comfort 
and strength. . ,, 

^ W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time, m Atlantic Monthly. 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 79 

*T'm not much on religion as they preach it, but any 
man who says he did not pray at the front is lying." (A 
captain.) 

"I never offered up a prayer at night at all until I 
went up into the battle area, but there, I can tell you, I 
prayed with a vengeance." (An officer.)^® 

That a very large part of this praying was stimulated 
by fear and took the form of petitions for physical pro- 
tection is equally certain. But it would be untrue to say 
that all the praying was of this sort. Men prayed also for 
courage and for friends and for victory. 'T would Hke 
to be a Christian," said a man to a chaplain, "for I have 
learned that I am a coward." "For the first time perhaps 
in his life the sense of human dependence had dawned on 
him. He had never felt any need before that his pay 
check did not seem to cover or would not have seemed to 
cover if it had been large enough. Now he found himself 
in a world that necessitated a new sort of power to meet 
his needs. There must be someone to whom he could 
commit his friends at home, to whom he could trust him- 
self, and upon whom he could lean should he pass into 
the unknown."^^ Even the cruder prayers for physical 
protection were not without other elements. There was 
penitence in some, as in the case of the captain who 
reported his prayer to a chaplain : 'T have done many 
things I am ashamed of, but please God, give me another 
chance." There was resolution in some of them, such as 
that of the young Jew who said to his chaplain : "When 
I was at the front I promised God to cut out everything 
if he would save me from shells." Then he added with a 
laugh, "But all them things is vanished now." 

For the emergency religion of the trenches few will 
have any great admiration. It is a pity that some in their 



" If one exception is necessary to qualify some of the more inclusive 
generalizations, here it is. A marine \vas asked what his thoughts were when 
he got up into danger. "I had no religious idea at all, "he said. "The one 
thing that kept saying itself over and over again was this: I have ten thou- 
sand dollars insurance, I have ten thousand dollars insurance, I have ten 
thousand dollars insurance, it don't make any difference." 

" Chaplain Dancey, in Northwestern Christian Advocate. 



80 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

eagerness to have religion thrive have not been very 
particular as to what sort this religion should be. But 
such religion does not thrive for long. "Many have 'de- 
veloped' religion through the persuasion of a barrage, 
but most of these have had time to 'recover' and are now 
their normal selves again." 

Professor Macintosh's comment, based on the observa- 
tion of British troops, should be sufficient to moderate 
any too great enthusiasm over trench religion: 

"Much the same thing may be said of trench religion 
as is notoriously true of 'death-bed' repentance. It some- 
times has a discernibly permanent effect, but speaking 
generally, it tends to disappear when the danger is over. 
It is a well known fact that when the troops are expecting, 
in the course of a few hours, to go into action, it is not 
a difficult thing to get them almost to a man to partake of 
the sacraments of the Church. But the writer can say 
from his own observation in a camp made up of veterans 
who have been for some months — in hospital, con- 
valescent home and command depot — away from the 
front lines, that the number of men remaining for the 
communion service after church-parade was commonly 
not more than from 2 to 5 per cent of the total number 
present. And this characteristically frank confession was 
made by an officer : 'When I was in the trenches I prayed 
like a good one ; but a week later, when I was back in 
the billets, I didn't care a damn for religion.' "^^ 

Granted that this emergency religion of the front lines 
was in the main an occasional and temporary thing, what 
have we as a result of it ? 

There are unquestionably some few men returning 
with a confirmed belief that by prayer they were spared 
from death and were the objects of a special divine pro- 
tection. Sherwood Eddy gives a typical account of such 
an experience as told him by a soldier : 

"No sooner had I done this than Fritz started to bom- 
bard. One shell fell in the hole in which I was, but ex- 
ploded in the opposite direction. Then another came and 

18 Douglas C. Macintosh in "God in a World at War." 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 81 

landed just above my head, but it failed to go off. Had 
it gone off I never would have been here now. I had 
prayed hard to God to deliver me from my enemies and 
when these things happened I felt my prayer was heard 
and that I was going to come through. "^^ 

A writer in The Standard gives a similar case as de- 
scribed by a soldier : 

"There were hardly ten minutes of the day that the 
Huns weren't shelling, the shrapnel and leaves falling like 
rain around our heads ; we had no protection whatever, 
had to dig a little hole of any kind just for the present 
to make a little shelter from the shell fire, and believe me, 
it was right there in one of these shell holes that I found 
my God, and I know that if I hadn't found him I would 
not be writing this to you now, but he watched over me 
and I didn't get even so much as a scratch."^" 

And a chaplain tells of six men who sought refuge in a 
shell hole: 

"For nearly an hour these men were held in this place 
and were praying that God would spare their lives. Not 
a man was injured." 

The man who prayed and was not hit has come back to 
give his testimony. The man who prayed and was hit is 
not here to tell his tale. But his comrades will tell 
it for him. We do not happen to have the American 
equivalents but the British chaplains were frequently 
faced with the case of "Bill who did pray" but yet had 
"his head blown off." A. H. Gray was reminded of the 
case of "Bob, the best man in our platoon, a man who said 
his prayers night and morning, a real Christian if ever 
there was one, and he was held up in the German wire 
and fairly riddled with bullets." And the chaplain's com- 
ment follows : 

"To teach a man that God will be with him even in 
the hour of death, and that beyond death there is nothing 
to fear, is to give him a faith adequate to the terror of 

" Sherwood Eddy, "With Our Soldiers in France." 
^ F. E. R. Miller, in The Standard. 



82 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

life at the front. But to leave him with the Old Testa- 
ment belief in the material salvation of the godly man is 
simply to mislead him and prepare him for real trouble. "^^ 

As a matter of fact it is a very few who have returned 
with any such faith as this. Time and the harsh impar- 
tial experiences of war were against it. The best men of 
all ranks would have little to do with it. The thing to be 
feared is that some of these best men, witnessing it, have 
been confirmed in their opinion that Christianity is a 
religion of fear or selfishness. 

It is not unreasonable to expect that some few men 
have returned with the vivid memory of times when the 
entire dependence of man on a power greater than man, 
the need and possibility of the companionship of God, 
and the care of One who knoweth even the sparrows 
when they fall, was keenly felt. The experiences may 
have been bound up with much that is crude and on the 
level with "natural" religion. But Professor Hocking's 
comment is worth recalling: 

"An idea is not necessarily false because it is primitive. 
To discover for one's self whatever truth there is in the 
simpler phases of religion may be the best way to revital- 
ize more adequate forms more conventionally held."^^ 

THE QUESTION OF GOD'S PROVIDENCE 

The problems connected with a Christian belief in 
God's providence have not been created but they have 
been very widely distributed by the experiences of war. 

"We must not allow ourselves to imagine that our 
experiences of these past three years have created any 
new difficulty for Christianity. They have only diffused 
the knowledge of their existence and have given edge and 
point to them all."^^ 

"Many men say that they don't see how an all-wise 
and all-powerful God could allow this war." 

"The problem of evil is the one big intellectual difficulty 

"A. H. Gray, "As Tommy Sees Us." 

22 W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time." 

28 Ibid. 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 83 

in men's minds. They are face to face with it all the 
time." 

This situation must cause deep thought fulness and 
humility in the preachers of religion. In the days ahead 
many of their hearers will be men who have met the 
hardest facts of life — the extremes of suffering and 
malice, the pain of the innocent, the death of the faithful. 
It is safe to say that for many years to come the problem 
of evil will be before us in a much sharper form than 
before the war. If the view of life we preach cannot 
meet the facts of human suffering it will be condemned 
without pity or delay.^* 

THE PREVALENCE OF FATALISM 

It is generally acknowledged that some sort of fatal- 
ism was prevalent under combat conditions. The 
question is as to what sort it was and as to its religious 
significance. There are fairly distinct levels of fatalism 
or what might loosely be called fatalism. Men may 
discover very early that "there's no use of worrying," 
that it weakens and does not save. It is not credible for 
long at the front that a man can do much by prayer or 
otherwise to ward off wounds or death. His chances of 
life or death do not depend on him at any rate. The 
way to inner peace is to "take no thought for your life." 
When men go on from this to decide what does control 
the chances the answers may differ. Luck, Destiny, 
God. The vaguest and most noncommittal answer is, 
Luck. "If your luck's in, it's in; if it's out, it's out." 
The result becomes a matter of chances or is subject to 
a vague personal possession that a man may "have with 
him" or be "out of." In any case one would not rest very 
heavily upon it. It is quite an advance from this stage 



" Cf. the British Report, "The Army and Religion": "The brute facts 
which have wrought such confusion in the minds of the soldiers have come 
also with rude hands into the sanctuaries of their kindred. It has become 
evident that the faith which will command the future will be that which 
deals most adequately with the problem of evil." 



84 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

to a developed fatalism, wherein the cards are all stacked, 
the results all foreordained, whether by Fate or God. 
Then men begin to say : "I'm not for it till one comes 
along with my number on it." Such fatalism is religious 
or not according as to whether the number is put on by 
God or Fate. In either case, if thoroughly believed, it 
will tend to make men reckless. 

It is not possible to tell from the reports of chaplains 
just what the so-called fatalism in the American army 
amounted to. In the British army there appears to have 
been a good deal of the thoroughgoing sort. We are 
inclined to believe that in our own army, perhaps be- 
cause of the shorter time of service, most men did not 
get far beyond the Luck stage. At least there is little 
evidence that men attained a fatalism which would cast 
all care or caution aside. 

As to its religious significance men differ. One says: 
"In my opinion the common fatalism of the soldiers is the 
logical outgrowth of the teachings of the Church. War 
has emphasized man's weakness, the frailty of life, the 
certainty of death, and the dependence of the individual 
on God." But another asserts: "The fatalism of the 
soldier is, of course, not Christian at all. It is a pagan 
survival." The probabilities are that a fatalism as 
fluid as that in the army tended to take its color from the 
previous beliefs of the individual, being religious or not 
according as the man was religious or not. 

There is no reason to expect that it will survive the 
war to any marked degree. It was mainly associated 
with battle wounds and death. It was relatively super- 
ficial, "a spiritual sedative," an attitude adopted as a 
protection against fear or anxiety. 

INCREASED FAITH IN IMMORTALITY 

It was entirely natural that war should bring to the 
men in the army a renewed interest in immortality. 
"Day by day there was held before them that oldest of 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 85 

the world's old questions : If a man die shall he live 
again?" Such an added interest is reported. A lieu- 
tenant writes, "Here [in the Zone of Advance] men con- 
fess to a new sense of reality in things religious, saying it 
was the first appreciation they had for 'life after death,' " 
An enlisted man reports, "Under stress of physical 
danger I would notice a distinct reaction towards prayer 
and a desire to believe in eternal life." A chaplain says, 
"My impression is that there has been a great renewing 
of belief in immortality." 

Under the stimulus of this added interest the faith in 
immortality, already latent in so many men, became 
temporarily at least more conscious and strong. This 
renewed faith was not the product of reasoning, nor was 
it largely connected in men's minds with Christian evi- 
dence. It was an instinctive assertion of human nature 
in the face of war's disaster. 

"Spontaneously the feeling arises as one views the 
broken and mangled bodies of the dead and dying and the 
row upon row of wooden crosses that mark the graves 
of the dead, 'Of course, there must be life beyond; this 
surely is not the end of all.' " 

"Men might think that they themselves should pass into 
nothingness, but they do not believe it possible that such 
a fate has pursued those whom they have loved and lost 
awhile on the battlefield." 

"They discovered a great natural conviction not rea- 
soned but instinctive, the conviction of the certainty of 
a future life. The poor clay, about to be wrapped in its 
black blanket, was 'not him.' He was elsewhere but he 
was still alive. Thus the violent storms and tensions of 
war had cleared the air and revealed to men their intui- 
tive knowledge of immortality in the form of an intense 
and definite personal assurance. "^° 

The following excerpt from a letter of a young officer, 
of the class of 1918 of Yale, to his mother, is illustrative 
of the instinctive confidence in a future life held by men 
at the front : 



^ John Kelman, "The War and Preaching." 



86 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

"If I must make the supreme sacrifice .... the life 
that I lay down will be my preparation for the grander, 
finer life that I shall take up. I shall live! And I shall 
be nearer to you than I am now or ever have been." 

Some have found considerable significance in the 
phrases or words commonly used by soldiers in speaking 
of death. Thus Dr. George C. Stewart of Chicago says : 
"There are two expressions used by the soldiers for 
death, and they reflect two attitudes: one distinctly re- 
ligious and the other skeptical or agnostic. I am glad 
to say that the religious phrase is the one most commonly 
used. The skeptical expression is 'napoo' (corruption 
of il n'y en a plus) and the religious expression is 'gone 
west.' It is doubtful whether these common expressions 
can be made to carry a large burden of interpretation. 
In part they represent that same diffidence in speaking 
of death that is common in civil life. Compare, 'If 
anything should happen to me.' 'When I am gone.' 
In part they express the vagueness of men's conception 
of immortality." 

There is no evidence that the general belief in immor- 
tality encouraged by the war was connected with the 
traditional Christian imagery of Judgment, Heaven and 
Hell, at least so far as Protestants are concerned. It had 
little content ; was not associated closely with any idea 
of salvation; was optimistic, without much thought of 
moral judgment or sharp alternatives.^® 

A number of chaplains have thought it necessary to 
combat the idea that death in battle saves. Sherwood 
Eddy says that the idea was "widely preached by many 
British chaplains." Norman MacLean reports that he 
found the idea occasionally amongst British soldiers. 
We have no evidence at hand that the belief was often 



^ The following is interesting as indicating one of the effects of the war 
on a chaplain's views. "Can we conceive the soldier hurled from the hell 
of battle into an endless hell? .... It is equally inconceivable that lives 
so stained and maired can 'immediately pass into glory.' • . ■ ; The Church 
must find a third category. It must propound not only a doctrine of heaven 
and hell, but also a doctrine of an intermediate state." MacLean and 
Sclater. 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 87 

preached or found in the American army. It was cer- 
tainly not prevalent. 

Dr. Kelman summarizes the situation as regards the 
belief in immortality as follows : "The belief in a future 
life has disclosed itself at the seat of war as a funda- 
mental element in human nature, an instinctive convic- 
tion of the soul of man. But that is obviously not enough. 
When the trials which disclosed it are over, men will 
forget, and lose it among the absorbing interests of the 
world. To really grasp and hold it, so that it will master 
us amid the passing show of life, we must enter the 
larger world of the spiritual and get in among the powers 
of the eternal life." 

APPRECIATION OF THE MEANING OF THE CROSS 

In war men have had experiences which make certain 
Christian ideas more intelligible and real to" them — such 
as Sacrifice, Sharing, Burden-bearing, Fellowship, the 
Cross and Atonement. On the level of human relations 
all of these become the personal experience of many men 
— in the risking of life for one another, in the close 
fellowship and sharing of the more intense moments, in 
the bearing of the burdens and disloyalties of the unfit by 
the fit, in the willing sacrifice of self for the furtherance 
of the cause. A common ground between the preacher 
of Christianity and many hearers has been furnished, 
which has been taken advantage of during the war and 
may be taken advantage of for some time to come. 

"Men are actually finding out what it means to suffer 
for others or to have others suffer and die for them. It 
is not difficult now to make them see the significance of 
the Christian teaching of vicarious sacrifice and atone- 
ment." 

"I do not think that the service rendered and the sacri- 
fice made have in most cases been connected in the minds 
of the men with Christianity. But the two are so alike 
that they will easily be led from one to the other." 

"We must remember that the preaching of the Cross 



88 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

has suffered from lack of experience in the hearers as 
well as from lack of passion in those who preached. It 
has left them cold because they did not know by experi- 
ence anything of what it meant. Now they are in a posi- 
tion to understand better what Christ did because of 
what they themselves have been doing. 

"To many young men in ordinary times life is prac- 
tically without sacrifice. In the absence of any clear call 
for it, they take the line of least resistance, and the nat- 
ural love of comfort and pleasure is the predominant 
motive of their daily lives. With the call to arms hun- 
dreds of thousands of such young men, neither more nor 
less selfish than their neighbors, suddenly chose and 
accepted a life of supreme and daily self-sacrifice."^^ 

"Certain facts are made plain. Chiefly that evil com- 
mitted in this world must be paid for The sol- 
diers have discovered the fact and continually with 
startling cheerfulness assent to it, that we are bound up 
in the bundle of life; that there is such a thing as the 
solidarity of the race ; that God acts on the assumption 
that the human race is a family. 

"In this war there is nothing plainer than that the bur- 
dens are unequally distributed and that it is in the nature 
of things that such inequality must continue. Some are 
fit to carry the burden and pa.y the debt and some are 
not."=^« 

The obvious dangers in approaching Christianity 
through the experiences of the soldier are that too great 
emphasis be placed on the mere fact of suffering regard- 
less of the character and spirit of the person who suffers, 
that the Cross of Christ be reduced to the meaning of "a 
man laying down his life for his friends," that religion 
be identified with patriotism, and loyalty to the nation 
with loyalty to the Kingdom of God. 

INTEREST IN THE BIBLE 

From the first day when America went to war to the 
last day of 1918, 4,558,871 volumes of the Holy Scrip- 
tures were supplied to soldiers and sailors by the Ameri- 



^ John Kelman, "The War and Preaching." 

^ MacLean and Sclater, "God and the Soldier." 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 89 

can Bible Society and the Y. M. C. A. Even allowing 
for duplication and loss this represents a tremendous dis- 
tribution of the Bible or portions of it among the men in 
service. Millions of men must have received them. We 
do not know how many kept and carried them, but the 
number was very great. A divisional chaplain writes : 
"During the first two weeks' fighting in the Argonne, my 
chaplains buried between fourteen hundred and fifteen 
hundred dead. The personal effects came through my 
hands. I did not count them. But I venture to say that 
in 90 per cent of the personal effects of these dead 
soldiers there was a Bible or a prayer book, a crucifix 
or a scapular, or some indication that religion was an 
element in that man's life."^^ An officer says: 'T have 
assisted in the burial of many American dead on the 
battlefields of France, and almost without exception we 
found a pocket Testament among the effects carried on 
the persons of the men." 

There was a very great increase in Bible carrying. 

Was there the same increase in Bible reading? Cer- 
tainly not to anywhere near the same extent. "Thou- 
sands carried Testaments and seldom read them." 
"Although hundreds of thousands of Bibles have been 
handed out, they have not been noticeably used except 
during passage through the U boat zone and on the 
fringes of No Man's Land." Many men figuratively 
transferred the Bible from the top shelf to the blouse 
pocket. It was comforting to have there as a symbol of 
religion and a suggestion of home piety. It was some- 
how a good thing to have along. 

"I found that the carrying of Testaments brought 
comfort, as though there were some efficacy in merely 
having possession of such. To Protestant boys they 

"^ "I had to search the dead bodies for their little possessions. The doc- 
tor and I were amazed to find that nearly every man had a Bible or cross 
on him. 'They do seem religious,' — he said, — 'these boys; I should never 
have thought they would have such things.' Perhaps they carried them as 
a charm — a sort of magic, perhaps because they felt more than they know 
that 'such things' contained the secret of life and death and immortality, 
perhaps because they had a deep love for them. None can say." Maurice 
Ponsonby. 



90 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

served as 'amulets.' My experience was that they were 
read very Httle except under stress of fear or excitement." 
"My work has all been in the hospitals and for the most 
part with wounded or convalescent men. I do not recall 
ever seeing a boy reading his Bible or even having one. 
But their personal effects were of necessity reduced to the 
minimum." 

But there is much testimony to the effect that these 
Bibles and Testaments were read or "read at" by many 
men, probably by many who had never looked into them 
before. Three hospital chaplains in different locations 
report as follows : 

"You can see patients propped up in bed, reading their 
Testaments, wherever you go." 

"Prayer books and Testaments were very popular and 
were read, especially the latter." 

"Testament and Bible reading is common among the 
bed patients." 

"I am surprised at the number of men whom I find in 
the barracks, reading their Testaments at night. Several 
times I have seen them reading their Testaments at the 
rest period in drill." (An enlisted man.) 

It is very difficult to estimate the significance or re- 
sults of this. Doubtless some men read with a vague 
notion that it was a meritorious thing to do. For some 
it was one of the expressions of emergency religion — one 
of the accepted practices of religion to which men blindly 
turned for inward peace or outward security. Chaplains 
do not seem to know what men looked for in the Bible 
principally or what they found there. In summary, it is 
safe to say that very many men have carried Bibles or 
Testaments who never did before. This may have in- 
creased their sentiment in regard to it and their curiosity 
as to its contents. It is probable that many men, on 
occasions at least, read the Scriptures for the first time 
in many years. With what results we do not know.^° 



^ The following judgment by a divisional chaplain is of interest: "Only 
in exceptional cases and under the guidance of strong personalities have 
Bible classes and discussion groups proved popular and enduring." 



THE EFFECT ON PERSONAL RELIGION 91 

THE DEMAND FOR REALITY 
One of the things which chaplains speak of very com- 
monly is an increased demand for reality which they be- 
lieve to be characteristic of many men who have been 
to war. They say that "the soldier has seen the real 
values of life," that "when men faced death cant and 
hypocrisy of every sort were sloughed off," that "Chris- 
tian teachers will be put on their mettle in days to come 
by men who will want plain English on fundamental 
matters." Certainly war carried men out into the 
borders of life where they met the "harder" facts of pain 
and death and the physical impact of man with man — 
the things we ordinarily avoid or cover or delegate to 
police and hangmen. They were threatened with the 
loss of all they had and may well have decided which 
was more worth trying to save — skin and pleasure, or 
soul. Some of the most elementary and deepgoing of 
human emotions were stirred. Perhaps the finest quality 
that some men won through to was something called 
"reality" — an absence of pretense, a steadiness, and readi- 
ness to meet eye to eye anything life may bring. It is 
such a quality which some have read in the faces of 
returning men. It is said that they will demand it with 
new emphasis of the preachers and representatives of 
religion. "If war itself has not supplied him (the 
soldier) with revelation in large measure, it may yet have 
endowed him with a great hunger and a direct undeceiv- 
able eye for judging the world of ideas to which he 
returns. Already one is aware of a keen wind astir 
seeming to bring with it a demand for substance in place 
of husks, for contemporaneous insight instead of mere 
inheritance, which may well warn all doctors of religion 
that a time of reckoning is at hand."^^ 

As to what "the real values of life" or "the funda- 
mental matters" are, men are bound to differ. And 
"reality" is not one of the easiest words to define. But 

" W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time," Atlantic Monthly. 



93 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

when men seek to interpret it in connection with the new 
demand made upon the presentation of religion they 
usually speak of such things as applicability, contempora- 
neousness, literalness, concreteness, intelligibility. 

The following are typical expressions of this demand 
as expressed or interpreted by chaplains and others. 

"The war's principal effect upon religion has been the 
demand for applicability. This has brought about a 
revelation of the chasm now existing between the average 
man and the institutions and doctrines of Christianity. 
They are to him unreal." 

"In my judgment the soldier will return with a demand 
both for a deeper interpretation of spiritual things and a 
more simple application in practical life of the truths of 
the faith."32 

"They live in the present world. No argument based 
on the customs of the earliest century will reach them. 
Which church is doing the work today ?" 

"They do not care much whether God created the world 
in six days or 16,000 years, or whether the church came 
into existence on Whitsunday." 

"The revision now needed is in the interest of making 
as much as possible as intelligible as possible."^^ 

"The secret of reality in preaching is intelligibility, and 
the secret of intelligibility is interest. 'Interest,' 'inter- 
esting' are to be understood in their etymological sense — 
interest — that which is common to speaker and hearer, 
that which they have between them."^* 

"All that consists in empty formulas, beautiful as they 
may be, powerfully as they may have contributed to 
nourish souls ; all the formulas which are today empty 
because our philosophic or religious thought, our experi- 
ences or our conception of life have outgrown them or 
caused them to burst their frames — all such formulas 
must disappear,"^^ 

2- Edgar DeWitt Jones, in The Christian Century. 

^3 W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time," Atlantic Monthly. 

s* John Kelman, "The War and Preaching." 

'5 Alfred Eugene Casalis, "For France and the Faith." 



CHAPTER VI 

THE EFFECT ON THE CHURCHES AND 
CHURCHMANSHIP 

In Part I of this volume we have discussed the attitude of the 
men in the army toward the Churches and have considered 
certain criticisms of the Churches frequently expressed. In the 
present chapter we shall consider how these attitudes which the 
men brought into the army have been modified by their military 
experience. 

CHURCH UNITY AND COOPERATION 

The most distinct and important of the immediate 
effects of army life and war on the Churches and church- 
manship were in the Hne of church cooperation or unity. 
We have already spoken in Part I of the very considerable 
indifference to denominational lines shown by men in 
the army. Unquestionably the situation encouraged and 
developed this indifference. Only three simple religious 
divisions were officially recognized — Catholic, Protes- 
tant, Jewish. Welfare agencies in the main representa- 
tive of these three divisions were recognized. And some 
effort was made to assign chaplains in accordance with 
the predominance or proportion of these elements in a 
given unit. But the divisions of Protestantism were given 
no recognition or encouragement beyond that received 
in the proportional appointment of chaplains and the ad- 
mission of denominational "camp pastors" to the home 
camps. Under these conditions it was natural that men 
already disposed to make little of religious differences 
should make even less of them in the army. 

"Denominational lines, so far as their lives in the army 
go, have practically disappeared." 



94 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

"There was no room for sectarianism in the army." 
"We have all but forgotten our denominational affilia- 
tions over here, and the more we have forgotten them the 
better it has been." 

"No one here thinks of asking for a Presbyterian or 
a Methodist or a Baptist chaplain. If he comes in the 
spirit of Christ it is enough." 

It is one thing to say that army life developed and en- 
couraged a prevailing indifference to denominationalism. 
It is another to say that it gave any large number of men 
an experience of church unity. Men of many denomina- 
tions of course met together at religious meetings, even 
at the sacrament. 

"With reference to church unity, the men in the army 
united. Catholics and Baptists and Presbyterians and 
Southern Methodists, Jews, and even the one Mormon 
and the two Mohammedans in our regiment came to hear 
me preach. The question of denomination was never 
raised." 

"In our regiment at were Baptists, Methodists, 

Catholics, Presbyterians, agnostics, Universalists, and 
others. We all worked, played, and worshipped together 
with never a word against any religious belief." 

Was this church unity? We question whether it was. 
The "binder" in this union was principally comradeship 
in arms, not fellowship in a common faith. We are 
inclined to believe that such a sense of fellowship, of 
organic life in the Church, what has been referred to as 
the "all-one-body" feeling, is relatively scarce in Protes- 
tantism. The comradeship of the army entered in as a 
substitute for this and united men of many affiliations 
and many faiths in a half religious, half military fellow- 
ship. 

This does not mean that this experience has no sig- 
nificance for the cause of church unity. It is a short step 
from one to the other. And men, having tasted one, may 
well have more understanding and desire for the other. 

More important than the mingling of men from vari- 
ous church bodies and from none was the development of 



CHURCHES AND CHURCHMANSHIP 95 

cooperation and fellowship among the chaplains in the 
army. This too was, of course, greatly influenced by the 
practical necessities of the situation as well as by the 
spirit of "the service," but it resulted in a real religious 
unity and cooperation. Chaplain Brent says : "The most 
striking thing in connection with our chaplains' organiza- 
tion has been the loyalty of the chaplains to one another 
and to our office. At the beginning of our organization 
it was agreed as a principle of the office that there were 
to be no official secrets, but that every problem or letter 
concerning our chaplains which came to the office should 
be the property and the responsibility of all. We were to 
respect the convictions of others as our own, and to 
minister to the needs of others irrespective of their reli- 
gious affiliations as though they were our own men. 
Not only have these principles been carried out in the 
G. H. Q. Chaplains' Office, so that there have never been 
any serious shadows or difficulty among ourselves, but it 
has also been the motive power always of the chaplains' 
organization throughout the army. The brotherhood 
which has sprung up is a living f orce."^* 

Bishop Perry, who, as chief of the Chaplains' Bureau 
of the American Red Cross was at the head of a force of 
seventy-six Red Cross chaplains, representing sixteen 
different denominations, has written of them : "A singu- 
lar fellowship unites them, prophetic of a unity that must 
survive the war if the capacity for real religion has been 
accurately gauged. Without surrendering their own con- 
victions or descending to the common ground of compro- 
mise, these representatives of every church, Roman, 
Anglican, and Protestant, have learned to work side by 
side, understanding and respecting one another's posi- 
tions."" 

This cooperation took the form of conference and 
common preparation at the chaplains' schools, the sharing 



** Report to the Adjutant General. 
^ Article in The Living Church. 



96 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

of information and plans, the securing of religious minis- 
trations for men of other faiths than their own, and 
administrative unity in the A. E. F. and its divisional 
organizations. 

It went beyond this in the form of direct ministrations 
to the members of various religious bodies. Within 
Protestantism there has been very considerable coopera- 
tion and interchange in the matter of baptism and initia- 
tion into membership. 

"Men of all denominations have freely welcomed sol- 
diers into the church of their choice and transferred their 
membership to the home church. Baptists are baptized 
by sprinkling when it is impossible to immerse them, and 
the Baptist minister participates in these sacramental 
services. Ministers of other denominations have not 
hesitated to immerse Baptists when there has been time 
and opportunity to do so." 

"One man was baptized by a Methodist minister using 
the Lutheran form of baptism with two Baptists as wit- 
nesses, and the service was performed in a Presbyterian 

elder's room Not one of the participants doubted 

the efficacy of the rite."^^ 

"I have baptized eight and received men into churches 
as follows : Methodist Episcopal, South, 6 ; Methodist 
Episcopal, 8 ; Presbyterian, 3 ; Congregationalist, 1." 

"I have received into the Methodist Church three 
members. I have had a special service for them here in 
my room, and received them for their own pastors. I 
have received into the Presbyterian Church one member, 
two into the Christian Church, one into the Baptist 
Church, and one into the Lutheran Church." (An 
Episcopalian.) 

This type of mutual ministration did not, of course, 
often take place between Protestants and Catholics, but 
one Protestant reports : "I have brought to their priests 
for baptism six and gathered together a class of twenty- 
five to whom the Roman Catholic Auxiliary Bishop of 
Chicago came out and administered confirmation. I have 
brought twenty-seven others who had not been to their 



^ Edwin A. McAlpin, Jr., in The Continent. 



CHURCHES AND CHURCHMANSHIP 97 

confession nor made their communion for a long time 
back to these duties." 

In the religious ministry to the sick, the cooperation ex- 
tended beyond the limits of Protestantism to Roman 
Catholics and Jews. 

"I was the only chaplain there at Orleans and minis- 
tered to everybody independently of church affiliation, 
I used to hear confession of Roman Catholic soldiers and 
give them the sacrament. I was accustomed to pray by 
their bedsides as well as at the bedside of every sort of 
Protestant and Jew." 

"I remember one man especially, a Jew, who was 
dying. When I asked him if I might not pray with him 
he replied at once that he was of Jewish faith. 'That 
makes no difference,' I replied, 'we have the same God, 
our Heavenly Father, and my Saviour was a Jew.' And 
then I prayed as we both could, commending his spirit to 
God's care." 

The following are typical of other cases of generous 
cooperation between Roman Catholics and Protestants: 

"Only the other day the Roman Catholic chaplain here 

offered me the church of for a Protestant burial. 

He told me recently that he would be perfectly willing to 
have me officiate at the burial of his people." 

"We had a burial of a boy and the Roman Catholic 
chaplain had a boy to bury at the same time. When we 
were ready for the burial I thought of course that he 
would want to go through his service separately and 
asked him how we should arrange it. He answered that 
it would be all right for me to read the service and he 
stood beside me while I read the service for the boys of 
both faiths." 

"In my last letter I told you of the old French priest. 
.... Well, he asked me to come back today — Sunday — 
to the high mass at eight o'clock. I rose long before 
daybreak, had breakfast with company and then slipped 
into the old church. I sat halfway up, but when the old 
priest saw me he left the altar and came down to where 
I sat and asked me to come forward. I declined but he 
insisted and he escorted me up inside the altar rail and 
set me in the Bishop's chair After the mass the 



98 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

priest let me have the church for my own service, .... 
the whole company was there, .... and the cure gave 
each boy a little Catholic medal." (A Baptist chaplain 
overseas.) 

Another chaplain tells of conducting a funeral in a 
Roman Catholic Church, with the priest and choir 
assisting. 

A further development in the direction of unity which 
took place in the army was the increased openness of 
the Communion^^ and the increased interchange in its 
administration. Within Protestantism the Communion 
was generally open to Christians of every name, with the 
exception, in some cases, of the Southern Baptist and 
Lutheran communions. Occasionally Roman priests ad- 
ministered the Communion to Protestants. Roman 
Catholics have not infrequently received the Communion 
at the hands of Protestant ministers. 

"I invited all baptized Christians to come to their 
Lord's Table and Baptists and all came."**' 

"I gave the Communion to Methodists, Baptists, Pres- 
byterians, Roman Catholics, and Lutherans." 

"All baptized men were invited to the Communion and 
a good many men of other communions came regularly to 
the services." 

"In the field, and indeed at Camp Upton, I have more 
than once had Catholics take Communion at my hands." 

"Men of all communions were at these services. I 
forbade none who came seeking. I invited all in the 
terms of the invitation itself, leaving it to the men to 
decide whether they could accept the terms." 

"On Sundays I take the Communion service. I invite 
all Christians to come. Presbyterians, Methodists, Bap- 
tists, and occasionally Roman Catholics are glad to come." 

"Many Protestants received the Blessed Sacrament at 
my hands and I have on occasions heard the confessions 

so "We can never be one — we can never in any deep sense know the 
blessedness of Christian charity — until we can truly meet together to do 
what the Lord Himself bade us do in remembrance of Him." MacLean and 
Sclater, "God and the Soldier." 

■"> The following quotations on this topic are principally from Episco- 
palians, since the Episcopal War Commission had made inquiries on the 
subject among a number of their chaplains, and the replies were kindly made 
accessible to this Committee. 



CHURCHES AND CHURCHMANSHIP 99 

of Roman Catholics and given them the Blessed Sacra- 
ment." 

"Chaplain and I have services together, .... 

with a celebration of the Holy Communion on the first 
Sunday of the month, at which I officiate, a Congrega- 
tional clergyman assisting." 

It is impossible to say with much confidence what the 
results of these developments and experiences are or will 
be. Probably they have increased the demand for church 
cooperation or unity among those who have served as 
chaplains. A large proportion of the chaplains with 
whom we have corresponded speak of this as one of the 
things they desire most for the Church, and many put 
it in the forefront. 

"We must prepare ourselves for church cooperation. 
No longer will the name of a church, a particular church, 
have any challenge in it." 

"The fundamental trouble when you face the three 
great phases of church activity, Religious Education, 
Social Service, and Missions, is lack of unity. We can do 
nothing on a saving scale till we have unity." 

"It is time that the Church put a stop to its competition 
and strife among denominations and applied itself defi- 
nitely and unreservedly to ministering to the deep social 
and religious needs of mankind." 

"The actual experience in cooperative activity in behalf 
of the great army task has created a very strong sentiment 
for cooperation." 

"There is no need so great as Christian unity." 

To what extent there has been developed an increased 
interest in unity on the part of laymen in the army is 
more difficult to say. A conference of some sixty-five men 
held in a "hut" in France expressed a unanimous desire 
to unite the denominations. An officer writes : "The 
common life of so many diflFerent men in barracks, on the 
march, in the hospital, eating, sleeping, living, fighting, 
suffering together, has made them ask, 'Why can't we 
worship together? Why do we have all the different 
denominations?' They felt this confusion before they 



100 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

entered the army and the common Hfe of close fellow- 
ship they have shared for these months has increased 
their feeling." On the other hand men say they "have 
met no criticism relative to impatience with sects or 
denominational differences or lines." Certainly it is not 
one of the main interests of the returned soldier. As 
we have already said the majority of returned soldiers 
are not greatly interested in the Church, whether united 
or divided. 

The question is as to the effect on the men within the 
Churches. This at least can be said. They have experi- 
enced a cooperative, non-competitive ministry. They 
have worshipped in intense moments with men of many 
affiliations. They have seen a tacit recognition of the 
validity of "orders" and "sacraments" other than those 
of their own church body. It would be very strange if 
these experiences had left no mark. 

INTERRUPTION OF RELIGIOUS HABITS 

There was a general interruption of habits of public 
and private worship in army life. This was the case in 
home training camps and to an even greater extent in 
the combat areas. The necessary rigidity of army rou- 
tine made attendance at regular services impossible for 
many men. The conditions of war often made it imprac- 
ticable to have services. The lack of privacy militated 
against private devotions, especially any outward ex- 
pressions such as kneeling or Bible reading. 

"The routine of camp life breaks up most old habits 
good and bad. Church attendance is small. Bible classes 
are very small, sometimes to the vanishing point." 

"At the front in my experience religious work was 
almost out of the question. Large groups of men were 
always risky. You never could tell when a shell might 
come along. Altogether it was a very difficult matter to 
hold services." 

"Men who had gone to church regularly before have 
gotten out of the habit in the army." 



CHURCHES AND CHURCHMANSHIP 101 

"Religious habits have decreased if one considers the 
old habits of going to church or rehgious services, the 
saying of stated prayers, and other outward expressions." 

It is doubtful whether this interruption was sufficiently 
extended or complete to affect permanently men with a 
living church connection. At most it probably has shaken 
loose some who were bound to the Church by the last 
slender bond of a formal or conventional relationship. 

Though probably fewer men maintained regular reli- 
gious observance in the army than in civil life, it is quite 
possible that a much larger proportion of men occasion- 
ally attended Church, said prayers, or read the Bible 
than when at home. Religion received a certain amount 
of public recognition and support in the form of regi- 
mental services, special occasions, etc. The alternatives 
were frequently very few, and men sometimes felt like 
the Scotchman who explained to a chaplain in the well- 
filled hut, "Och ! We'd gang ony where on a nicht like 
this." 

The same causes which interrupted religious habits 
resulted in a very general disregard of Sunday. Rou- 
tine was maintained with little change in training camps. 
Any observance of the day was frequently impossible 
overseas. Recreation and entertainment in the form of 
games, theaters, etc., were not only permitted but fre- 
quently encouraged. Many chaplains report, "There is 
likely to be an increased neglect of Sunday." 

PUBLIC WORSHIP 

Circumstances in the army led to a great informality 
in religious services. The surroundings were informal. 
The men were of many traditions, not accustomed to 
any one form. The hours were irregular. This tendency 
was furthered by the belief on the part of many religious 
workers that such services were most effective. In one 
direction this represents a gain. Traditional usages have 



102 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

been interrupted and we may expect to see a much 
greater measure of experimentation in services on the 
part of ministers who have served in the army. Many of 
the services had a simpHcity and directness and intensity 
which will make those who participated restless with 
much of our common worship. The judgment of the 
Anglican Committee on Worship applies to American 
conditions: "We think it is true to say that nearly all 
men have found it a comfort to have services at the front 
which obviously aim at being simple, real and short. 
And we believe it is fair to argue that a great number of 
men at the front will vote that by contrast, services at 
home, if conducted in pre-war fashion, are deficient in 
these qualities."*^ 

A more dubious result has been the development of the 
"bright and snappy" service and the overstrained effort 
to express religion in the vernacular. Still worse has 
been the combination of vaudeville and preaching, and the 
confusion of entertainment with worship. 

"In many cases the men objected to such informality as 
combining vaudeville singing and jazz band music with 
religious services. Some welfare secretaries seemed to 
think the men wouldn't take religion straight. A mis- 
taken notion." 

"So many men have said to me that they go to church 
because it is 'quiet and restful' — and these men of small 
training — that I feel there is danger in 'bright and 
snappy' services. They do want clear-cut, definite 
preaching and up-to-date methods, but with this they 
want dignity and fine standards." 

"There was a place for informal services. There was 
also a place for services of dignity and beauty. I found it 
helpful to have a printed service on little leaflets which I 
distributed when we gathered for worship. Often I 
would begin with a talk, and get the men's minds and 
hearts in the right mood and attitude, and then have them 
read the service with me. It worked. I don't think we 
should too easily dismiss the worth of formal worship." 

*^ The Report of the Archbishops' Second Committee of Inquiry. 



CHURCHES AND CHURCHMANSHIP 103 

"I should query whether the apparent demand for 
'bright and snappy' services is not rather a demand for 
plainness and hard-hitting, the Billy Sunday or John 
Bunyan virtues, of which the 'bright and snappy' ideal 
is but a tinsel misinterpretation." 

In certain localities and among certain chaplains there 
was a great increase in the use of the Communion service. 
At Camp Devens, for example, there was an early Com- 
munion in each of the Y. M. C. A. buildings every Sunday 
morning, conducted by ministers of many Protestant 
denominations not accustomed to the frequent use of the 
service. Especially in the case of Episcopal chaplains 
this service was very largely and effectively used both in 
this country and in France. Many believe that their 
experience indicates a widespread responsiveness to the 
sacramental emphasis and calls for a greatly increased 
use of it within Protestantism.*^ 

"I have found many men who were not Episcopalians 
eager for the Holy Communion." 

"I have usually had the Communion service with my 
men twice a month and have found them very apprecia- 
tive of it." 

"The value of the Holy Communion as the service 
which appeals to men is something which I did not believe 
until I had proved it for myself." 

"I share the common experience of the chaplains that 
the objective in religion has ministered very appeal- 
ingly."*^'' 

"I am convinced that the sacraments and their teach- 
ings are to have a newer meaning and a wider emphasis." 

"As a general rule, I found the response to frequent 
Communion services very genuine. It was a revelation 
to me of the value of the Communion as a vehicle of zvor- 
ship to see how men would come regularly to a zveekly 
Communion. At the front it was my custom to admin- 
ister Communion after almost any Sunday service, and 

*^ "Every one must have noticed the popularity of ritual, and especially 
of sacraments, among men who had not previously felt any particular need 
or inclination for these ways of worship. No one who has attended Holy 
Communion at the front, where little companies gathered to receive the 
bread and wine, will ever forget how singularly appropriate and natural it 
seemed." John Kelman, "The War and Preaching." 

*2« Published interview with Senior Chaplain Brent. 



104 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

there was a very real response. But the response was just 
as real in the training camp in France before we went to 
the front, and in our last billets before we sailed for 
home." 

"Attendance on weekly Communion services in my 
experience was not at all limited to Lutherans and Epis- 
copalians. Men from all churches seemed to find some- 
thing in the sacrament which filled a need no preaching 
service could reach. I believe we shall all come to a more 
frequent use of it." (A Presbyterian.) 

The actual extent of the increase is impossible to 
gauge. Some of it was deceptive, inasmuch as it took 
place where there were great numbers of men, often 
constantly shifting. In such circumstances the in- 
creased frequency or prominence of the service would 
not represent a similar increase in its use. It may also 
be true that under the circumstances of war the sacra- 
ment with its definiteness and objectivity made an 
appeal which it would not have with the same men in 
normal life. 

SPECIAL MINISTRIES 

In the army certain elements in the ministry were 
especially called for and widely extended — especially 
the ministry of personal service, the ministry to the sick, 
and the care of the dead. 

Through the ministry of personal service many repre- 
sentatives of the Church have come in touch with great 
numbers of men whom they would otherwise have 
seldom reached. Though the number of chaplains pro- 
vided by the army was entirely inadequate, the chap- 
laincy gave to those ministers who enlisted in it a very 
unusual opportunity to serve in tangible and useful ways 
the men with whom they were associated. And in the 
Y. M. C. A., Red Cross, etc., many more clergymen and 
laymen found a like opportunity. What the results 
have been in modifying men's views of the professional 
ministry we do not know. But many ministers have 



CHURCHES AND CHURCHMANSHIP 105 

returned with a renewed conviction that in disinterested 
and practical service to the concrete and felt needs of 
men lies the most direct way to their confidence and 
loyalty. 

The ministry to the sick, wounded and dying was one 
of the largest and most important elements in the work 
of the chaplains. "The service of the clergy for the sick 
and wounded is the vivid impression that the war has 
left with a hundred thousand of our soldiers. For thou- 
sands more it was their last experience in life. While at 
the time of the great oflfensive, the mobile and evacuation 
hospitals were receiving and discharging patients by the 
hundred, the chaplain was among them, ministering to 
the wounded, receiving last messages, and administering 
last rites by the side of the dying, identifying and burying 
the dead. In the great base hospitals farther from the 
lines there was the opportunity for continuous inter- 
course and growing friendship with the same men day 
after day as they were nursed back to health, often to 
their places in the line."*^ 

In the course of their hospital experience several Prot- 
estant chaplains have felt the need of something similar 
to the last rites of the Roman Church." 

"I think that the war will teach Protestantism the value 
of symbolism. I have been particularly impressed with 
this in my hospital work when I have had to deal with 
men whose apprehension had been dulled by disease or 

*^ Chaplain James DeW. Perry, Jr. 

^ "Ritual is a compressed and rapid language, able to express much in 
a simple gesture. One need be no believer in magic to profit from the 
dedication implied in making the sign of the Cross, or in having it made 
over him. A nurse in a base hospital, who has had occasion to witness many 
deaths, contrasts the simplicity of the Catholic rites and their evident value 
for the men with the semi-embarrassment of the Protestant minister, who 
must, as person to person, find 'something to say.' The rite ought to bring 
to the dying man an authoritative gesture of the spiritual life of the race, 
declaring to him that in the solitude of passing he is accompanied by a 
divine solicitude. 

"Such an affirmation cannot be rightly made, it is true, except by a 
thinker; here Protestantism is right as against any quasi mechanical ad- 
ministration of sacraments. But neither can such an affirmation be com- 
petently made by any individual on his own authority; here the organization 
which to any man best represents our spiritual heritage is alone competent, 
for the reason that it alone can convey to him the meaning." W. E. 
Hocking, in Atlantic Monthly. 



106 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

injury. There have been times when it has been prac- 
tically impossible to give them ideas through the spoken 
word, but when, if for instance they had been taught the 
symbolism of the Cross, an idea could have been given 
them through the sense of sight, which would have been 
a great help." 

"I used to think the R. C.'s had an advantage in their 
confessional and ritual for the dying. It was something 
they were accustomed to from childhood and was natural 
and comforting, but I did not see how without that child- 
hood training we Protestants could improvise an equiv- 
alent ritual or ceremony." 

It has been pointed out, on the other hand, that men 
trained to dependence on the Church for their assurance 
of God's care and forgiveness suffered additional dis- 
tress when under the circumstances of battle they had to 
die without its ministrations. 

The experience in the army has demonstrated what was 
apparent in civil life, how religion and the Church re- 
tain their hold on death long after they have lost their 
hold on life. No function of the chaplain was more uni- 
versally demanded and respected than the care of the 
dead. "Never will the salute of the men be more reverent, 
their greeting more affectionate, their wistful gratitude 
more apparent than when the chaplain returns to his out- 
fit, footsore and weary of heart, after a day spent in the 
burial of those who have been called upon to make the 
supreme sacrifice." Under the conditions of war "inti- 
mate and loving family care is impossible, and the sense 
of gratitude to the one who will assume that labor is 
unbounded and inexpressible."*^ 

Men were ready to take part in burial services even at 
considerable personal risk. "1 remember one occasion 
in particular where I called for volunteers as the plot 
was under fire, and the whole battery volunteered. It 
was quite trying for me to stand there by the grave in the 
dripping rain, exposed to shell-fire, but the men in the 



*" Chaplain Brent's Report to the Adjutant General. 



CHURCHES AND CHURCHMANSHIP 107 

party were quiet and respectful, while the chaplain said 
prayers and there was not the slightest indication that 
they were not glad to expose themselves in order that 
the forms of the Church might be observed." 



CHAPTER VII 

THE EFFECT ON MORAL LIFE AND 
STANDARDS 

The same differences of opinion as to the total effect 
of war and military training appear in the case of moral 
life and standards as were reported in the case of personal 
religion. There are observers who find no marked change. 
There are those who feel certain of improvement or retro- 
gression. The question of permanence is always present. 
It is impossible to strike a satisfactory balance between 
local losses and local gains, improvement in certain direc- 
tions and demoralization in others. 

"The constantly recurring question, Does war improve 
men or deteriorate them? is a question which has no 
answer. For war itself does neither one thing nor another. 
Certainly neither war nor any other drastic experience 
leaves men where it found them. But any exposure of 
large bodies of men to extraordinary conditions will 
segregate them into two groups, those who are strength- 
ened by the ordeal and those weakened by it."*^ 

THE EFFECTS OF ARMY DISCIPLINE 

There is a great difference of opinion as to the perma- 
nent, or even the immediate, effects of army discipline. 
On the one hand, men speak of the added virility and 
breadth, of the subordination of self-interest, the learn- 
ing of obedience and the meaning of authority ; on the 
other hand, of the lowering of individual initiative and 
responsibility, and of an outward and legalistic view of 
obedience developed by army life. 

Unquestionably, thousands of men have gained 
mentally and physically from the comradeship and 



** W. E. Hocking, "Morale and Its Enemies." 



THE EFFECT ON MORAL LIFE 109 

discipline of the army. Frail men have found health, 
"soft" men have gained in healthy physical and spiritual 
readiness to "endure hardness," timid men have learned 
to mingle naturally with their fellows, indolent and 
self-indulgent men have lived ,in the service temperate 
and vigorous lives. All this is gain even though tem- 
porary. 

The evils of military discipline lie chiefly in the loss of 
personal initiative and the outward and legalistic view 
of obedience that it may foster. 

"The army has the machinery by which it can force me 
to obey ; anything that I can do to evade that machinery 
is perfectly legitimate. It is the army's concern to make 
a soldier of me ; it is my concern to endure the process 
with as little discomfort to myself as I can."*'^ 

"The soldier's life is so arranged that the only thing to 
do is to be irresponsible. His food, shelter, and clothing 

are to be provided for him He can do nothing of 

his own volition The shape of his shoes, the 

color of his hat, and the size of his necktie, and the place 
of his bed are regulated and determined for him. He 
lives a life where the will has no meaning, and where 
thought and initiative are not only not demanded but 
suppressed."*® 

"Another year of this and I won't be worth while living 
to do anything more than wrap up packages and run 
errands. It may be that the deadening effect of it will 
wear off in a few weeks. I hope so." (An enlisted man.) 

"In my observation, there was no lowering of individual 
initiative among the men. Perhaps the artillery, where I 
served, is better in this regard than some other branches. 
Great individual initiative and responsibility are neces- 
sary to success when an artillery regiment is in action, or 
moving about at the front. Take a driver of a four-line 
mule team, hauling supplies. He will be routed out at 
midnight and told to hitch up and take a load out 
through the night to some place at the front he has never 
visited. He must go over strange roads, often through 
shell fire, find the place, deliver his load, and get his mules 

" T. W. Pym, "Papers from Picardy." 

** Frank Tannenbautn, "The Moral Devastation of War," The Dial, 
April, 1919. 



110 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

back to camp. That's pretty different from driving horses 
on a farm or pushing a pen in some office. Take the non- 
commissioned officers — every corporal is absolutely 
responsible for the men under him, their appearance, 
safety, discipline, efficiency. Take the mechanics, who 
must know the guns better than the officers, and be 
responsible that they are always in shape for instant use. 
Take the mess sergeants and stable sergeants, the horse- 
shoers — each has a job whose responsibility is really 
tremendous." 

The resultant of these influences, good and bad, it is 
impossible to prophesy. At best we can only suggest the 
possibilities. 

"The soldier's life is unsettled ; will that produce in 
him a habit of restlessness and roving? He is accustomed 
to destroy, not construct ; will that make him a waster, 
and put him out of patience with the slow building of 
production? He is used to sensational and sudden effec- 
tiveness ; will this impose on him a dramatic or melo- 
dramatic mind, making all 'piping times of peace' dull to 
him, and unnerve him for all quiet labor? He is habitu- 
ated to consuming, living by requisition on goods sup- 
plied lavishly (sometimes) by others; will this create in 
him the temper of dependency? 

"Above all, the soldier has borne the brunt, and he 
knows it. What will be the effect of that ? What argu- 
ment is it building up in him today? 'Now, civilians, our 
share is done ; we rest on our laurels ; give us our ease 
and our rewards'? Or is it this: 'We have learned to 
choose the harder part, and to do more than our share; 
give us our heaviest burdens and we will show you how 
men can carry them' ? 

"There is no prophet who ought to venture an answer 
to these questions, unless he can see with what hidden 
approvals, rebellions, provisos the alleged 'habits' are 
being accepted."*^ 

It is this last consideration which needs especially to 
be kept in mind in discussing the effect of military ex- 
perience on men's mental or moral life. To "submit" 
to discipline for a time as being something essential to the 



*^ W. E. Hocking, "Morale and Its Enemies." 



THE EFFECT ON MORAL LIFE 111 

performance of an unpleasant and distasteful duty, all 
the while loving independence, is altogether different from 
"succumbing" to discipline from mental laziness and lack 
of initiative, however much they may look alike out- 
wardly. 

This factor of motive has been much overlooked in the 
discussion as to whether the war has "brutalized" men. 
It is not uncommonly said that men "have been hard- 
ened and to some extent brutalized." It is a result 
which "the pacifist" in many of us almost wants to see. 
It would be additional evidence of how cruel and brutal 
a thing war is. But we do not believe that any such 
result can be largely seen in the men returning from 
active service. 

Dr. Kelman has the following to say on this topic as 
a result of his observation of British troops : 

"It has often been lamented that the dreadful deeds 
which have to be performed in such actions as a bayonet 
charge or a bombing raid upon enemy trenches must per- 
manently brutalize those who have to do them. This 
however is not the report of those who know the men. 
.... It seems to be the motive and not the deed that 
counts in permanent moral consequence."^" 

THE EFFECT OF THE GROUP EMPHASIS 

Perhaps the greatest single factor in the army as it 
affected moral standards and moral life was its group 
character. Circumstances and training developed a tre- 
mendous "community" of interests. Not only were 
men dressed alike. They were drilled as a "body." 
They were dealt with as a "body." They were all in 
essentially the same "fix." They were separated from the 
special interests and groupings which normally influ- 
enced them. The whole life was corporate. Men tended 
to an extraordinary degree to feel alike and think alike. 
Ideas, rumors, suspicions, criticism, sentiments, were as 
epidemic as the highly communicable diseases like 



John Kelman, "The War and Preaching." 



112 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

measles and influenza. The result was not only an ideal, 
if very partial, democracy, but a heightening of group 
morality. The virtues sustained by the groups, the vir- 
tues with a strong element of sociability in them, the 
virtues especially demanded between man and man in 
close contact, were at a premium — unselfishness, gener- 
osity, humility, loyalty to the unit. 

At the same time many influences served to weaken the 
morality of self-control — ^the loss of personal responsibil- 
ity, the greatly heightened physical stimulus or excite- 
ment, the separation from the home interests calling for 
sexual restraint, the upsetting of the normal economic 
life calling for economic prudence, and the lack of the 
refinements of life demanding some niceness in language. 

According to at least one prominent observer the result 
was something of a conflict between the ethic of the 
soldiers and the ethic of the preachers of Christianity, 
"The preachers were denouncing drinking, gambling, and 
immorality. The people were denouncing cowardice, 
selfishness, and egotism."^^ To what extent this conflict 
of emphasis became articulate among the men except 
through Judge Lindsey we do not know. But we believe 
it helps to explain the considerable criticism of the 
"negative ethics" of the Church that has come out of the 
army. The Church has frequently appeared to put first 
emphasis on the morality of self-control, on the virtues 
which make a man "above reproach. "^^ Army life called 
especially for the virtues which make an easy companion 
and desirable neighbor. 

"A great spirit of brotherhood has developed in the 
army." 

"As a result of the military life men .... learned 
to play the game with others." 

"1 Ben Lindsey, "The Doughboy's Religion," Cosmopolitan. 

*' "I was in an officers' mess some time ago, and they were discussing a 
new arrival. One of them said: 'He is quiet, he doesn't smoke, doesn't 
drink, doesn't play bridge, and doesn't swear.' 'He must be religious,' con- 
cluded another. If the new officer had been described as cheerful, generous, 
hospitable, and brave, they would not have concluded that he must be 
religious. Yet which description is the most like Christ?" Thomas Tiplady. 



THE EFFECT ON MORAL LIFE 113 

GAMBLING 
As already indicated in Part I, the vices obvious in the 
army were gambhng, profanity and sexual immorality. 
It is generally agreed that the first two showed a decided 
increase over civil life. The third presents a more com- 
plex problem. 

*Tt is no exaggeration to say that practically every 
soldier gambles. "^^ 

"Men gamble who do not in civil life." 

"Young men who never gambled before are now gam- 
bling."" 

Various influences combined to bring this about. "No 
longer master of tomorrow, the spirit of chance and 
adventure enter as foresight disappears. "^^ Money was 
of little value. Its loss left a man still provided with the 
necessities of life. The whole atmosphere of economic 
prudence was far away. Entertainment was rare and 
essential. The games of chance, whether crap or cards, 
required little paraphernalia and could be played under 
all circumstances. Though the army took an official 
position against gambling, it was often not enforced and 
often not enforceable without continuous 'spying.' 

It is impossible to say how largely this increase will be 
carried over into civil life, where the conditions are so 
different. Gambling is certainly not very seriously dis- 
approved of by the majority of young men. Probably 
many have gambled more or less habitually in the army 
who did so rarely or not at all before. Probably many 
have less conviction against something that was so gen- 
erally accepted in military life. 

PROFANITY 
"Swearing undoubtedly increased." "The men were 
under a severe strain which manifested itself in a great 



^' Frank Tannenbaum, "The Moral Devastation of War," The Dial, 
April, 1919. 

" "The testimony of religious workers is not wholly dependable, since 
many ministers in civil life are dealing only with a selected class and not 
as in the army with mtn drawn from all ranks of society." 

°^ W. E. Hocking-, "Morale and Its Enemies." 



114 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

increase in profanity." The main influences in bringing 
about this increase were the general crudeness of the 
surroundings, and the roughness of the life, the absence 
of woman, and the tension and strain of war. 

Most chaplains tend to minimize its religious or moral 
significance and think of it as mainly due to the abnormal 
conditions of military life. 

"Men in the army use a flow of language that would 
sicken, not meaning very much by it." 

"Most army profanity was a juvenile habit, meaning 
less than it sounded." 

"They are as profane as any men I have ever heard. 
In the mass the boys do not mean to be profane. This 
blasphemy is not the output of irreverence, their foul 
words are not the evidence of inner foulness. Much of it 
is no more than the hysteria of a terrible experience, the 
falsetto of overwrought nerves, the effort to express the 
inexpressible ; much of it is a habit acquired uncommonly 
which they will shake off as they shake off the mud of the 
trenches." 

SEXUAL IMMORALITY 

Two groups of influences were brought to bear on 
sexual morality by the war — conditions induced by war 
itself and the policy of the government and allied 
agencies. 

The circumstances of war were mainly demoralizing 
as regards sex life. The separation of men from home 
and the normal associations with women not only took 
away accustomed supports but heightened men's interest 
in the other sex. "In the daily routine of peace, men and 
women acquire the habit of forgetting that they are men 
and women. They are able to deal with each other, not 
quite impersonally, but unsexually, as buyers and sellers, 
as employers and employed, etc. This equilibrium war 
everywhere destroys."^® Furthermore, the boredom, 
monotony, and restraint of military life called for excite- 
ment and easily turned "leave" into a "moral holiday." 



^' W. E. Hocking, "Morale and Its Enemies." 



THE EFFECT ON MORAL LIFE 115 

Overseas there were added to these influences the intense 
stimulus of warfare combined with the extreme relaxa- 
tion of the rest periods, and in some sections an astonish- 
ing amount of professional and amateur "solicitation." 

Combating these influences was the policy of the 
government, military authorities, and allied agencies. It 
is fair to say that the central objective in this policy, 
though not of course the only one, was the elimination of 
venereal disease. 

As summarized by the Surgeon General, "The Ameri- 
can attack on venereal diseases has been upon the follow- 
ing lines : 

1. The education of soldiers and civilians as to the 
physical dangers of venereal disease. 

2. Discouragement tending to prohibition of the use 
of all forms of intoxicants, the idea being that the sexual 
impulses are always excited by such stimulation and 
self-control diminished. 

3. Repression of all forms of illicit sexual intercourse, 
both clandestine and public, under the theory first ad- 
vanced by American medical men, that the exercise of 
the sexual functions is not essential to health and manly 
vigor. 

4. Thoroughgoing provision for, and use of, the pro- 
phylactic treatment. 

5. The employment of stern measures and adequate 
punishment for those contracting venereal disease. 

6. The calling into play of physical, social, moral and 
even religious factors, that might aid in keeping men free 
from illicit sexual intercourse, and thus free from dis- 
abling venereal disease. "^^ 

In the camps in this country this program in all its 
elements was carried out with remarkable effectiveness. 
Overseas the same thoroughness was not possible. "The 
foreign governments with which it was necessary to deal 

" Surgeon General's Report, June 30, 1918. 



116 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

held views about prostitution very different from ours. 
The French beHeved in 'toleration' and 'regulation.' 
For generations they had been used to licensed brothels 
and registered prostitutes, inspected with greater or less 
care by medical officers. They felt that an army could 
not get along without sexual indulgence, and that an 
attempt to carry out such a policy was to court discon- 
tent, a lowering of morale and health standards, and per- 
haps even mutiny. So sincerely did they believe this 
that prostitution facilities for our soldiers were officially 
offered to the American High Command."^® 

As a result of the educational, recreational and repres- 
sive measures, the situation was unquestionably better 
in many of the large training camps than it is in many 
civilian communities. Men had a more intelligent 
knowledge of the risks. Alternative entertainment was 
at hand. Solicitation and sex appeal in the immediate 
neighborhood were practically eliminated. A man had 
to look for trouble and look hard. It is from these home 
camps that one receives the more optimistic reports. 

"As to moral life it was somewhat better in the army 
than out of it." 

"The men have been living far cleaner and more tem- 
perate lives than in civil life." 

On the other hand, in certain areas in France there 
was a serious loss. Of such conditions the base port 
already mentioned is an example. Men were free, with- 
out the restraint of home opinion, and temptation was 
constant and fearfully insistent. The results among both 
officers and men were very bad. It is these areas that 
account for the especially pessimistic reports. 

"The leave periods are times of temptation that are 
making a sad record." 

"There's a saying here that after six months in the ser- 
vice if a man hasn't had a sexual experience he is either a 
liar or a coward." 



"* Raymond Fosdick, in The New Republic. 



THE EFFECT ON MORAL LIFE 117 

There is no doubt as to the remarkable effectiveness 
of the army policy in reducing illicit sexual intercourse, 
where jurisdiction over the neighborhood was permitted. 

"The army statistics indicate that the rate of venereal 
infection contracted after admission to the army for the 
first year of the war will be approximately 20 per 1,000 
men in the United States and 47 per 1,000 men in the 
expeditionary forces. The lowest rate attained prior to 
the present war was 91.23."^^ As compared with the 
rate during periods when men were being inducted into 
the service and including the cases brought in, reaching 
162.4 per 1,000 in the National Army, the improvement is 
marked. 

If these results were always attained at the expense of 
an increasing prophylaxis rate there would be small com- 
fort in them for the moralist. But such was not the 
case. For example, in the case of the base port cited by 
Mr. Fosdick and already referred to, the houses of prosti- 
tution were eventually placed out of bounds. "The 
figures show what happened."*'^ 











Disease 




Month 


Troops 


Prophylaxis 


Cases 


Houses 


August 


4,571 


1,669 


72 


open 


September 


9,47i 


3,392 


124 




October 


3,966 


2,074 


67 


Houses 


November 


7,017 


885 


81 


out of 


December 


4,281 


539 


44 



bounds January 3,777 523 8 

Colonel Snow has published a chart showing the effect 
of public health measures and law enforcement in lower- 
ing the venereal and prophylactic rates among troops 
stationed in and around San Francisco. In the four 
months' period illustrated not only did the venereal rate 
go down, but the prophylactic rate was reduced from 
800 to 300. 



^* Rt. Rev. Wra. Lawrence, "Venereal Disease in the Army, Navy, and 
Community." 

°° Raymond Fosdick, "The Fight Against Venereal Disease," The New 
Republic. Nov. 30, 1918. 



118 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

There is a sharp difference of opinion as to the moral 
effect of prophylaxis as administered in the army. The 
official and authoritative position was entirely admirable. 
It approached the subject primarily from the medical 
viewpoint, but it was emphatically against illicit sexual 
relations, upheld the possibility and healthfulness of 
continence and interpreted the early preventive treat- 
ment, not as a protection of the individual from the conse- 
quences of his own guilt, but as a protection of the com- 
munity. But in the administration of treatment and the 
giving out of instruction the army had to work through 
officers and doctors whose personal convictions and lives 
were not always in accord with the official position. At 
best, prophylaxis involves delicate moral problems. Its 
systematic administration acknowledges "the customari- 
ness of the breach of custom involved ; the psychological 
step from this to an appearance of official sanction is a 
short one."*'^ It readily becomes an admission of the 
situation and a mere cynical avoidance of personal risks. 
It is the difference in the attitudes of officers and doctors 
that probably accounts largely for the conflicting impres- 
sions resulting. 

"The army itself, acting under orders, has held up a 
higher moral standard than ever before in history. It has 
taught in every way it could that the prevention of the 
consequences of impurity, the cure of the disease con- 
tracted, is not the first barrier it would raise, but the last 
and most desperate ; the barrier not for the strong man 
and efficient soldier, but for the weakling who must be 
saved, if possible in spite even of himself and his weak- 
ness." 

"Military methods in dealing with venereal disease will 
have had, I believe, an effect good rather than bad." 

"The treatment of venereal diseases tends to make the 
soldier consider them from a physical point of view." 

"The army's attitude is simply to safeguard the men 
from the physical consequences of sin, and sometimes I 
fear the men get the idea that when they have escaped 

"^ W. E. Hocking, "Morale and Its Enemies." 



THE EFFECT ON MORAL LIFE 119 

the consequences they have done all that is to be required 
of them." 

"For a fellow to be clean means something very differ- 
ent today than it used to. It doesn't mean that he is pure 
sexually but that he hasn't contracted some disease." 

"The example of officers is bad. Medical officers have 
presented the moral question as required by the army but 
have said they didn't live up to it, and have suggested that 
men do as they please, so long as they didn't get caught." 

"It has been noted that where officers, non-commis- 
sioned as well as commissioned, have a sense of responsi- 
bility for the moral, not less than the military character 
of their men, a clean command is the result."*'^ 

"There is a great difference in the way prophylaxis is 
administered, and its use or abuse, its good or harm, may 
be governed thereby. In some stations, the treatment 
was given in a joking way, with little or no attempt at 
privacy. Some men would be shamed out of taking the 
treatment, and thereby, in perhaps their first exposure, 
run great danger of infection. Others would have all 
their sense of modesty broken down, and become utterly 
shameless. In my own regiment, we were lucky enough 
to have a surgeon with the good sense to insist on having 
prophylactic treatment administered with the utmost pri- 
vacy. The patient was always taken into a separate 
room, with no one present except the man who adminis- 
tered the dose." 

The effect of the looser standards of sexual morality 
in France upon the minds of the American men who 
have been overseas we cannot now determine. That 
there is the possibility of lowered social ideals is clear. 

"The standard of home life that they have seen over 
here is not American, and with its peculiar freedom and 
subtle charm, not a few are ready, at least for a time, 

to accept it The social sin is to many not a sin 

but a natural gratification of desire, falsely condemned 
at home. This I have heard asserted again and again. 
'The false standards of the people of America need to 
be corrected,' they say, 'or at least modified, and the real 
truth taught.' " (A private; formerly a teacher of psy- 
chology.) 

'^ Chaplain Brent's Report to the Adjutant General. 



120 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

On the other hand there are many who recognize the 
problem with equal clearness but who feel that the con- 
tact with lower standards will tend to make the men 
more appreciative of, and more loyal to, the higher ideals 
that are held before them at home. 

PETTY STEALING 

This was one of the special developments of army life, 
especially overseas. It appears to have been common 
from "stores" and to a less extent from fellow-soldiers. 
There is a general agreement that its occurrence is not 
very significant. But it must be remarked that such steal- 
ing often indicated a lack of consideration for the com- 
fort and needs of other men which make it distinctly a 
selfish "looking out for number one." 

"This is not significant as stealing, but probably comes 
out of the strong community sense in the army. There is 
a lack of the sense of personal possession. Whatever is 
loose and one wants, one expects to take. Possibly it 
issued in the A. E. F. from the combat days when it was 
understood that everything was common property. It 
has continued with decreasing force since then." 

"We have a new word for stealing in the army — 
namely, 'salvaging.' Men will salvage almost anything, 
and there is little regard for property rights. Perhaps 
there is reason for this in the fact that on his arrival in 
France the soldier was often compelled to turn in his 
barracks bag with all the personal property it contained ; 
he was then sent to the front with the minimum of equip- 
ment. Now he feels, perhaps, he may get some of it 
back. Probably the point of view will disappear after 
demobilization." 

Although the abnormal conditions of military life have 
created serious moral problems, men have had an op- 
portunity in the army to learn by experience many of 
the moral lessons the Church is engaged in teaching. 
"The soldiers have been learning subordination of their 
individual desires to the good of the army. They have 



THE EFFECT ON MORAL LIFE 121 

been learning a very real lesson in a brotherhood which 
takes no account of property ownership or class distinc- 
tion. They have learned how to do team work. They 
have learned intense loyalty to leadership. They have 
learned the satisfaction of binding their lives to a great 
purpose, and above all they have learned that the great 
enthusiasms of life are reserved for those who suffer 
in a great cause." 

At any rate they have had a chance to learn these 
things and are better prepared to understand them. 



SUMMARY OF PART II 

If it was difficult to make generalizations concerning 
the religious and moral life of the men as they came into 
the army from civilian life, it is even more difficult to 
generalize concerning the effect of the war and military 
training on the men. The conditions under which various 
sections of the army lived were so diverse that we must 
safeguard nearly all of our conclusions with the re- 
minder that there were undoubtedly many groups to 
which the following summaries do not fully apply. 

I. The Effects on Personal Religion — Faith and Prac- 
tice. 

1. As to the total effect of military training and war 
on the personal religion of the men in the army we do 
not yet know. There is much evidence that there has 
been very little change. Yet many observers believe that 
the outcome has been conducive to religion, while many 
others are sure that there has been more loss than gain. 
Evidently there have been gains in some directions and 
losses in others, and we have to admit that we have no 
scale of values by which to weigh the net result. We 
have also to bear in mind that the religion of the trenches 
was largely "emergency religion," and that concerning 
its permanent significance we cannot yet decide. 

2. It seems clear, however, that in all military areas, 
there were occasions that "made men think" — such occa- 
sions as enlistment, embarkation, actual advance to the 
front, or recuperation from wounds. Temporarily at 
least large numbers of men were made more serious and 
impressionable. 



SUMMARY OF PART II 123 

3. The effect of this heightening of interest in serious 
things was to lead many men whose religious life had 
been rather conventional before into a more active and 
conscious faith. There was also a considerable body of 
formal new decisions to lead better lives. But it cannot 
be said that there was any "mass movement" toward 
religion or any large accession to the ranks of definite 
Christianity. On the other hand, there is little concrete 
evidence of loss of religious faith, although a general 
dulling of sensibilities and lowering of standards as a 
result of combatant service is sometimes noted. 

4. A more vivid sense of the need for, and the reality 
of, God came to many men at the front. They conceived 
Him mainly as Protector or Companion, with relatively 
little thought of Him as Judge or Saviour, 

5. It also seems certain that there was much informal 
praying at the front. Most of it took the form of peti- 
tions for physical protection and sprang out of a new 
sense of dependence, but there were also other elements 
of need that found expression — need for moral courage, 
for forgiveness, and for the welfare of dear ones. 

6. The problem of evil and of God's providence was 
accentuated by the war and was the main intellectual 
difficulty in the way of religious faith. 

7. There was a decided renewal of interest in im- 
mortality and increased belief in it. There was, however, 
little moral or Christian content in the conception. 

8. The soldier had experiences that made more in- 
telligible to him certain Christian ideas, such as the 
meaning of the Cross. There is a danger, however, of 
the significance of the Cross of Christ being reduced in 
his thinking to the level of the ordinary suffering of 
ordinary men. 

9. There was a great increase of Bible carrying, and 
probably a considerable increase in reading it. The 
results we have no way of determining. 



124 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

10. One of the most commonly noted observations is 
the increased demand for "reaHty" on the part of men 
who have been face to face with the grim facts of war. 
By "reality in religion" they seem to mean mainly prac- 
tical applicability to daily life. 

II. The Effects on the Churches and Churchmanship. 

1. The situation in the army encouraged and de- 
veloped the indifference to denominational lines already 
noted in Part I. The principle of unity, however, was 
primarily comradeship in arms rather than comradeship 
in faith. The remarkable cooperation and fellowship 
among the chaplains, even in baptism and in the Com- 
munion, is the most significant factor in the direction of 
church unity. It is probable also that among laymen, 
in spite of their general tendency to accept denomina- 
tional divisions and to attach little significance to them, 
the definite experience of a cooperative ministry and the 
recognition of the validity of "orders" and "sacraments" 
of other church bodies than their own will have some 
significance for civilian life. 

2. There was a general interruption of habits of 
public and private worship and a widespread disregard 
of Sunday — perhaps, however, not extended long enough 
to have serious effect on men with settled religious habits. 
On the other hand it is probable that many men were 
brought into touch with church services in the army for 
the first time in a long period. 

3. Public worship in the army has led to an appre- 
ciation of the importance of simplicity, directness and 
intensity in services. There is also a considerable ten- 
dency among ministers who were in the army to attach 
larger value to the Communion. 

4. The importance of the ministry of helpful service 
to the practical needs of men, the ministry to the sick, 



SUMMARY OF PART II 125 

and the care of the dead, received new emphasis in the 
army. 

III. The Effects on Moral Life and Standards. 

1. The effects of the war on moral life have been so 
diverse and depend so largely on local conditions that 
the definite conclusions that can be reached are very 
few. Army discipline seems to have been beneficial to 
many, at least temporarily, yet to others it has probably 
been harmful, destroying initiative and creating a merely 
legalistic view of obedience. So far as the present evi- 
dence goes men do not generally seem to have been 
"brutalized" by warfare ; possibly the high motives of the 
men offset this tendency. 

2. The greatest single factor in affecting moral 
standards was probably the corporate character of army 
life. There was a heightening of group morality — of 
regard for the common good. 

3. Gambling, profanity, and petty stealing decidedly 
increased, a result due largely to the abnormal conditions 
of military life. 

4. The circumstances of war were mainly demoraliz- 
ing to sexual morality. But in many of the large home 
camps the educational and recreational programs and 
the repressive measures used by the Government resulted 
in a better situation than is found in many civilian com- 
munities. On the other hand, in certain areas in France 
there was unquestionably serious loss, as conditions were 
far less favorable and government jurisdiction over the 
neighborhood was not possible. 

5. There is a sharp difference of opinion as to the 
moral effect of prophylaxis. The official position of the 
Government, while approaching the subject from the 
medical viewpoint, upheld continence as the ideal and 
interpreted prophylaxis as a protection of the community 
rather than as giving to the offender immunity from con- 



126 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

sequences of sin. But the men who were responsible 
for carrying out the Government's poHcy often lost 
sight of this point of view and the fact of prophylaxis 
was itself sometimes interpreted as official sanction of 
immorality. 



PART III 
LESSONS FOR THE CHURCH 



CHAPTER VIII 

WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN FROM 
THE ARMY 

It is the purpose of Part III of this report to gather up 
briefly the lessons for the Church that stand out clearly 
from the foregoing consideration of religion in the army. 
To treat them fully would be to enter into a complete 
discussion of the nature and function of the Church — 
which is neither possible in this report nor within its 
scope. Various aspects of the Church's duty in the light 
of the war experience are treated in other reports and 
pamphlets, issued or to be issued by this Committee. We 
include here only such conclusions as seem to us to follow 
directly from the facts evident in the army or the in- 
fluences felt there. 

Detailed applications of the lessons here pointed out 
are not possible without entering into local and denomina- 
tional conditions. It is clearly beyond the scope of such 
an interdenominational group as the Committee on the 
War and the Religious Outlook to make such applica- 
tions. The following discussion, therefore, is confined to 
suggestions as to general lines along which Ave believe 
thought and action should move. Only the various 
church organizations and local pastors can give practical 
effectiveness to what is here suggested. 

I. CONCERNING CHURCH MEMBERSHIP 

The great body of inactive church members and per- 
sons whose allegiance to the Church is only nominal calls 
for a candid reexamination of the meaning of church 



130 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

membership and of the actual workings of the various 
methods of admission into the Christian Church. 

Part of the price which Christianity pays for being 
"generally accepted" is the blurring of the line between 
Christian and non-Christian, church member or non- 
church member. "Being a Christian" and "belonging 
to the Church" become matters of inheritance, like na- 
tionality. The evidence furnished by the army has shown 
how great that "blurring" is. Men hardly know where 
they stand. The convictions or way of life of men are 
frequently no indication of their official relation to the 
Christian Society. Men within the Church and men out- 
side it have little conception of the obligations involved 
in membership.^ 

We recognize the great difficulty in drawing a sharp 
line between what constitutes a Christian view of life 
and what does not, or in saying how good a man must 
be to be a Christian. And we realize that men will in- 
evitably differ as to the extent to which the Church 
should be regarded primarily as a fellowship of men and 
women who have attained to a certain way of living and 
the extent to which it should be thought of simply as a 
training-school for all who are sufficiently interested in 
religion to care to become associated with the organized 
expression of it. But in spite of these difficulties it should 
be possible for the several Churches to make their mem- 
bership more significant and vital. It is clear that there 
is at the present time great laxness in the admission of 
new members and in the instruction of those admitted, 
and serious leakage from the existing membership. 
There is no evidence that this situation is peculiar to any 
denomination, or that it is the accompaniment of any 
system such as infant baptism, confirmation or profes- 



' Cf. the Report on the Chaplains' Replies to the Lord Bishop of Ken- 
sington : "We have been admitting multitudes into the Fellowship of the 
Church, and we have not succeeded in providing that out of the Body- 
should be found those who would make the Fellowship a reality for those 
brought into it." 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 131 

sion of faith. It appears that all the Churches are 
busily engaged in creating nominal members. 

II. CONCERNING RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 

The widespread ignorance of the meaning of Chris- 
tianity and of church membership dem,ands a greatly 
increased emphasis on the teaching office of the Church. 

The testimony that we have received goes to show that 
if a vote were taken among chaplains and other religious 
workers as to the most serious failure of the Church, as 
evidenced in the army, a large majority would agree that 
it was the Church's failure as a teacher. We have not 
succeeded in teaching Christianity to our own members, 
let alone distributing a clear knowledge of it through the 
community at large. ^ If we learn our lesson the result 
will be a vastly greater emphasis on our teaching function. 
In comparison with other tasks it must have more 
thought, more energy, more financial support both in the 
local church and in the denomination. It is furthermore 
a task that challenges us to the most effective interde- 
nominational cooperation that can be achieved. 

But while the fact that Christianity is so misunder- 
stood is cause for the most careful consideration of the 
teaching function of the Church, it is also — strange as 
the remark may seem — a great ground for hope. For 
does it not mean that if only men did understand how 
deep and vital the Christian faith really is they would 
embrace it ? If the rank and file of men were deliberately 
anti-Christian we might well despair. If they are indif- 



2 Cf. the conclusion, based on entirely different evidence from ours, 
reached bv the British interdenominational committee in its report on "The 
Army and Religion": 'That probably four-fifths of the young manhood of 
our country should have little or no vital connection with any of the 
Churches, and tfiat behind this detachment there should lie so deep a mis- 
understanding of the faiths by which Christian men and women live, and 
the ideals of life which they hold, is, perhaps, the most salient factor of 
our evidence. Plere is an alarming fact, which is, surely, clear proof that 
something somewhere has gone gravely wrong, and that the hour has come 
when we must discover the hidden causes of the evil and do what may be 
done to set things right." 

The Message of the Canadian Chaplains Overseas Military Forces to the 
Churches of Canada and the Anglican Report on the Chaplains' Replies to 
the Lord Bishop of Kensington also emphasize "the fact of a very wide- 
spread ignorance about even the simplest truths of Christianity." 



133 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

ferent to the Church through ignorance and misunder- 
standing we may surely hope that more effective teaching 
will remove the causes of the indifference and win for 
the Church the young manhood in which, as we have 
seen, there are such fine qualities on which to build. 

1. The revelation of the large degree of failure in our 
religious education challenges us to a far more serious 
attention to the Sunday school and a candid examination 
of its curriculum, methods of teaching and organization. 

It is upon the Sunday school that the Protestant 
churches have mainly depended for any systematic reli- 
gious education of the children and youth. It is found 
in practically every church in every community. Yet 
the ignorance of young men as to the vital meaning of 
Christianity, so clearly disclosed in the cross section of 
youth that we had in the army, is an indication that the 
Sunday school must have been seriously ineffective in its 
work. 

It is not here possible to point out in detail the causes 
of this failure in the Sunday school. Probably the chief 
factor is the inadequate time at its disposal, the neces- 
sity of crowding the entire program of worship, instruc- 
tion and handwork into a single hour. The inadequate 
training of teachers, the lack of proper courses adapted 
to various ages or needs, the neglect to provide sufficient 
opportunity for self-expression in service — these and 
other points might be noted. What we particularly desire 
to emphasize, however, is that we must regard the Sun- 
day school with vastly more seriousness and give to it an 
attention that is consonant with the great opportunity 
it presents for training in Christian living. 

It also seems important to urge upon all Christian 
workers a more thorough consideration of the definite 
purposes which the Sunday school should aim to achieve. 
Too often its function seems to be exhausted in simply 
teaching Bible stories, securing the memorization of Bible 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 133 

passages and keeping children "interested" and off the 
street. We need to realize more clearly that the Sunday 
school exists fundamentally to teach the meaning of the 
Christian religion and to train in the Christian way of 
living. Chaplains criticize our religious education on the 
basis of its results, for its vagueness and failure to con- 
nect with the real business of living. Men have religious 
ideas, but these ideas have not sufficient definition or 
clarity to give men stability or an assurance of knowing 
where they stand. It appears to be quite possible for 
one to go to Sunday school and church considerably 
without ever gaining a clear conception of what Chris- 
tianity is. And in the case of great numbers the Chris- 
tian view of life not only fails to control action but has 
the air of being something that is perhaps vaguely true 
but inapplicable. Our religious education must be more 
definite and more vitally connected with the positive 
Christian duties and the Christian way of life. 

2. Training in intelligent habits of private and public 
worship should be greatly stressed. 

The army experience has been a tremendous demon- 
stration of the power of routine in carrying men over the 
periods when impulse is exhausted and interest is at low 
ebb, and in giving the individual the stimulus and support 
of group action. At the same time it has exerted a great 
strain on the routine of religion, on the habitual practices 
of private and public worship. The evidence is that very 
few Christians within Protestantism have deeply grooved 
and intelligent religious habits. Neither public worship 
nor private prayer is the regular practice of a large 
number. To teach the use of these habits, guide their 
development and give them the strength that comes from 
use should be one of the principal efforts in religious 
education. 

We find ourselves in hearty agreement with the state- 
ment of the Archbishops' First Committee of Inquiry: 



134 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

"A Sunday school which makes no systematic provision 
for training in worship is seriously defective and the defi- 
ciency should receive the most earnest consideration in 
view not only of the general principle but of the condi- 
tions of the day." 

3. Two false conceptions of Christianity should be 
openly and convincingly combated — that it is a selfish 
thing and that it is a negative thing. 

The best way to combat these current criticisms of 
Christianity as taught by the Church is to see to it that 
the Christian life as we teach it consists in neither of 
these things, but in positive love and active good will. 
There is a place for the negatives, the "Thou shalt nots" 
as restrictions placed on the man who would gain a posi- 
tive ideal. But if by our use of the Ten Commandments 
or of more modern prohibitions we are training men to 
look upon these as the primary or characteristic element 
in Christian ethics, we are justifying the criticism. Sim- 
ilarly there is self-interest — not selfish interest — in the 
Christian motive. He who would find his life must lose 
it, but the promise is that he shall find it. That is quite 
different from making the Christian goal individual 
future safety or selfish inner peace. 

4. A Christian interpretation of sex life must be a 
regular part of all Christian education. 

Whatever the percentage, it is agreed that sexual im- 
morality represents the gravest problem in personal 
morality presented in the army. There has been a great 
advance in physical and medical education on this sub- 
ject. There should be a corresponding eflfort on the part 
of the Church to give its membership a Christian inter- 
pretation of sex life. "Thou shalt not commit adultery" 
is not enough. Only an interpretation of sex life as the 
physical expression of spiritual love and as a divine crea- 
tive power will lift it to a Christian level and give men 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 135 

positive motives for self-control. But this cannot be 
accomplished if we postpone all serious attention to the 
problem until the age of young manhood is reached. 
Education in the Christian ideals of sexual relationships, 
wisely adapted to the developing life of the individual, 
must become an integral part of the whole process of reli- 
gious education. 

5. The religious instruction and training given in the 
home outlives all other religious education. In directing 
or controlling that influence lies our greatest opportunity. 

"The faith they have came from home for the most 
part and generally from a good mother who taught them." 
The parish minister discovered long ago that the idealism 
and religious interest of parents is at its height in their 
thought of their children. The minister in the service 
has been impressed again and again with the fact that the 
idealism and faith of men so often center in their home 
and especially in the mother.^ It is in the relationship of 
parent and child that by far the greatest opportunity 
for religious instruction and training lies. 

But with the development of specialized agencies of 
religious education there seems to have come a lessening 
of definite or systematic education of children in the 
home. The Church needs to provide courses of study 
for parents, plans for family worship, suggestions as to 
the cultivation of right attitudes towards others, and in 
other ways to stimulate and guide and help parents in the 
religious education of children. If we can center atten- 
tion on the primary obligation of the home in religious 
training we shall be doing the most effective thing possi- 
ble in the development of Christians. The renewing of 
the religious life and spiritual atmosphere of the home 

» C/. the statement in the British Report on "The Army and Religion": 
"Nothing impresses those who have worked among our men more than 
their deep and passionate love of home. It is abundantly clear that of all 
the vital influences moulding their characters for good, none is today like 
this in its refining and humanising power. It is in fact the key of the 
whole spiritual situation." 



136 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

is at the root of our task. If we fail here we shall fail 
everywhere. 

III. CONCERNING FUNDAMENTAL TEACHINGS 

The fundamental doctrines of the Church need to he 
"revitalised" — taught in such a way that they shall ap- 
pear as real explanations of the meaning of life and the 
anszver to men's practical needs. 

The evidence presented in this report has shown clearly 
that great numbers of men think of the doctrines of the 
Church as something perhaps vaguely true but abstract 
and formal, remote from their real problems and their 
daily needs. This being the case, it is no wonder that 
there is, as we have found, a general tendency to think 
that religion ought to be merely a matter of conduct and 
service — ^that "what you believe doesn't matter." We 
have to make it clear that it is just this lack of vital belief 
that matters terribly — make them see that genuine and 
definite faith in a Christian God, in immortality, in the 
Lordship and Saviourhood of Christ, in salvation from 
sin, in the coming of the Kingdom of God on the earth, 
is the very foundation of the noblest living and the 
highest service. 

Since it has been emphasized again and again in this 
study that there is a widespread misunderstanding as to 
what Christianity really means, it is important here to 
inquire whether this misunderstanding is not due, in part 
at least, to our failure to present the fundamental Chris- 
tian truths in a fresh and living way. 

There are certain emphases that need particularly to be 
made in our teaching, in the light of what we have found 
in the army. The following paragraphs will consider 
some of them : 

1. The generally accepted beliefs in God and immor- 
tality need to be given a definitely Christian content and 
practical effectiveness. 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 137 

The present problem of the Church is not so much to 
create belief in Grod and immortality, at least intellectual 
assent, as to fill out and develop a belief that is general, 
and above all to make clear and emphatic the moral im- 
plications. Belief in a god is widely distributed. Living, 
effective faith in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
Christ is rare. Vague belief in a general Providence, 
somehow beneficent, is common. But of God as a 
positive Other Will whose purpose claims our wills and 
whose righteousness judges our disloyalty men know 
little. And in the case of immortality the same lack of 
moral content is apparent. The traditional imagery of 
heaven and hell has lost much of its former convincing- 
ness and with it has gone much of the sense of moral 
alternatives — of judgment to come. 

2. "The Kingdom of God" should he placed among 
the major ideas which the Church is seeking to implant 
and propagate. 

During recent years the Kingdom of God, conceived 
of as the rule of God on earth, has gained an increasingly 
prominent place in professional Christian thought. For 
many it has come to be the central idea in the Christian 
scheme. In view of this development it is interesting 
that in our army a very general ignorance of the term 
is indicated.* It should also be noted that it is the lack 
of any adequate conception of the social mission of 
Christianity that seems to underlie very largely the ob- 
servation, so constantly reported, that the men do not 
understand the meaning of Christianity. This being the 
case there is serious danger of the idea of the Kingdom 
of God becoming professional and academic without liv- 
ing content in the minds of average Christians. 



* Cf. the conclusion of the British Report on "The Army and Religion": 
"One of the questions that we put under the head of 'Points of Contact' 
was, what do men think of the Kingdom of God? To this there has been 
practically no answer at all. The men of whom we are thinking do not 
seem to know anything about it. They do not seem to have any idea that 
Christianity has a gospel for all humanity and looks out upon the reign of 
God in human society." 



138 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

3. In view of the vagueness of impressions as to the 
life and character of Jesus Christ there is need for the 
most careful thought and most devoted effort to present 
Him in His fulness. 

It has been noted elsewhere in this report that in the 
replies of almost all of our correspondents there has 
been a strange lack of direct evidence as to what the men 
think of Christ. The almost inevitable conclusion is 
that the thought of the men is generally too vague to 
make it really possible to record it. And this inference 
is, in a general way, borne out by such evidence as we 
have received upon this point. It is reported that the men 
"respect Christ," or think of Him as "the best man that 
ever lived," but there is little testimony that leads us 
to believe that this general attitude of respect rests on any 
definite idea either of His way of living or the qualities 
of His character that make him the Lord of all good 
life and give Him recreative power in the lives of men. 

Do we not here have our supreme opportunity to give 
to Christian teaching the note of "reality" which the 
soldier is reported to demand? If Christian faith seems 
vague and remote, inapplicable to the practical problems 
that men meet and impracticable in daily life, surely we 
need most of all to present the historical figure of Jesus 
Christ in all His fulness as the Son of Man, in whom 
the truths that we hold and the ideal to which we are 
committed are given objective reality by expression in 
human life. 

4. In view of the loss of meaning in the terminology 
of salvation zve need a clearer presentation of the positive 
content of the doctrine and a thoughtful consideration of 
the real motives and interests and experiences to which 
zve m,ust appeal. 

If men are interested in what we mean by salvation and 
sin and atonement, they do not know them under these 
names. The common words and phrases that have in 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 139 

the past expressed the great truths of the Gospel have 
lost vital meaning for many. We cannot save by correct 
phrases. We must rediscover for ourselves and express 
in very plain language what we do mean by salvation.® 
Is it future safety, or inner peace, or liberation from the 
control of evil desires, or the power to do good and be 
good, or the "new social order," or union with God? 

The demand of the soldier for "reality" is a fair de- 
mand. It challenges us to express our theological con- 
ceptions in terms that are readily understood, in a way 
that makes clear that they are explanations of his own 
best experiences and convictions and that Christian truths 
have immediate application to the problems that he is 
facing every day. So far as traditional terminology or 
form of expression are foreign to our manner of thinking 
in the present day, the responsibility sharply confronts 
us to find terminology that is in keeping with modern 
knowledge and experience. 

5. We have in the experience of the soldiers, and in 
the knowledge of that experience among many others, an 
unusual point of contact and starting point for the inter- 
pretation of many great Christian ideas such as Sacrifice, 
Burden-Bearing, the Cross, Atonement, Brotherhood, 
Providence, Immortality, Dependence on God. 

"Hardly anything, I believe, will be more fateful for 
the religious history of the next generation than the suc- 
cess of the Church in expressing its own knowledge of 
religion, or of Christianity in particular, so that the re- 
turning soldier and others can recognize it as something 
of which their own experience has already spoken, 
whether or not it was known by that name."^ From the 
very beginning the Church has found in the experiences 



° Cf. the resolution adopted at the Conference of Australian chaplains in 
May, 1919: "In particular [this conference] considers that the seriousness 
of sin and the need of redemption through the Lord Jesus Christ require 
emphasizing but in order that those truths may be presented more effectively 
they should be delivered from their more or less traditional interpretations 
and applied to the actual life and thought of the present generation." 

« W. E. Hocking, "Religion in War-Time," Atlantic Monthly. 



140 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

of military life and war helpful analogies for the under- 
standing of religion. They assuredly need to be used 
with restraint and without sentimentality if we are not 
to alienate men who have experienced the original. But 
they are a great common ground of understanding for 
this generation. Men who have discovered that they 
belong to their country are better prepared to understand 
that they belong to God. Men who have known complete 
obedience have an introduction to what God's will de- 
mands of man's will. The brotherhood and democracy 
of the ranks at its best is a fleeting experience of what 
the Church seeks in its own fellowship. Men have known 
the necessity by which the finest and fittest carry the 
burden of the disloyal and unfit. And they have been 
brought face to face in a new way with the ancient prob- 
lems of Evil and Providence. 

We need to realize, at the same time, that there are 
dangers in approaching Christianity through the experi- 
ences of war that we must guard against — perhaps even 
counteract — such as the identifying of religion with pa- 
triotism, the militarizing of Christ, the confusion of 
American democracy with the Kingdom of God. 

IV. CONCERNING PUBLIC WORSHIP 

The fact that in spite of all the obstacles in the way 
of public worship in the army the instinct for it was 
still so unmistakable ought to give us a nezv appreciation 
of its ineradicable character in human life and lead us to 
nezv emphasis on its significance. 

The unanimity with which chaplains have testified to 
the response of men to dignified, quiet and reverent wor- 
ship is remarkable. Overseas there were of course great 
difficulties in the way of holding services in an atmos- 
phere conducive to worship. Barns, dug-outs or shell- 
torn fields often constituted the setting. There were 
also, as noted elsewhere in this report, constant distrac- 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 141 

tions. Sunday was often the same as every other day. 
Yet in spite of all the difficulties the impulse to corporate 
worship was not destroyed. We have a new apprecia- 
tion of its value whenever it is so conducted as to carry 
with it a note of genuineness and reality, 

1. The army experience has demonstrated both the 
great value of the short, simple, direct, 'hard-hitting' ser- 
vice, and also the -mide appeal of the Communion. 

In the services at home there are other interests and 
tastes to be considered besides those of young men. But 
the services which particularly appealed to men in the 
army were in the main shorter, more simple, more in- 
formal, more direct than the customary services in our 
churches. The combining of entertainment and amuse- 
ment with worship, however, which was so often carried 
out in the army, does not seem to have made a permanent 
appeal to the men who appreciated in any adequate degree 
the significance of worship.'^ 

Side by side with this responsiveness to the simple and 
informal service is noted the appeal of the Communion 
service. The interest of men in it was at least sufificiently 
great to urge us to consider afresh whether within Prot- 
estantism that sacrament has not been too much neg- 
lected. Our experience with services in the army would 
seem to lead us to an appreciation of the need for elas- 
ticity in public worship, and perhaps also to something 
of a rapprochement between the liturgical and the spon- 
taneous types. 

2. Certain criticisms of church services are prevalent 
— that they are unintelligible, artificial in tone, "unreal," 
feminine in atmosphere, too long, not heartily congrega- 
tional. 

The charges made by soldiers against our church ser- 

'' Cf. the statement in MacLean and Sclater's "God and the Soldier": 
"While we may easily attract the thoughtless by cheaper methods (provided 
the local picture house is not open), we shall alienate those who are the 
backbone of the nation, if we turn away from the dignity which should 
mark our approach to God." 



143 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

vices are not war products, but they were more frankly- 
expressed and more commonly heard in the army.^ Sol- 
diers were not hesitant in demanding that services be 
natural and thoroughly sincere, and not too long; that 
language be plain-spoken and clear ; that the minister and 
choir shall not "do it all." A chaplain with a wide ex- 
perience has recently written : "There is among the men 
a widespread resentment of sentimentality in worship 
and of 'the cult of the pretty-pretty.' .... To put it 
in somewhat more philosophic terms than they use, it 
would seem that they condemn contemporary worship on 
two grounds : first, that it is vicarious ; second, that it is 

introspective They miss the corporate note in 

devotion. Since they are healthy minded young things, 
they resent having their spiritual attention turned in- 
ward."® 

3. In preaching it is charged that Christian ministers 
are frequently uninteresting, antiquarian, artificial and 
tiresomely long. Self-examination is in order. The pres- 
ent emphasis on "reality" demands a special striving 
after importance, intelligibility, sincerity and contempo- 
rary application in preaching. 

The demands made upon our preaching are in large 
part those made upon our church services in general. 
The faults criticized are in the main the faults of some- 
thing that has grown conventional and lost its vitality. 
That element in our regular worship which has been 
most free for the expression of new life seems to have 
grown old. We need to recall that there is nothing sacred 
in the customary length, form, terminology or tones of 
preaching. Even this institution is made for men. It 



8 Cf. the following statement in the Message of the Canadian Chaplains 
Overseas Military Forces to the Churches of Canada: "Men have grown 
impatient with the least suspicion of insincerity in our public devotions. 
They feel that many of our hymns and prayers do not really express their 
desires. The very phraseology is foreign to their thought and speech. They 
will not continue to repeat forms, no matter how ancient and sanctified they 
may be, if these are no longer a vehicle for the soul's true longing." 

8 B. I. Bell, "The Church and the Civilian Young Man," Atlantic 
Monthly. 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 143 

must be judged by the extent to which it ministers to the 
practical religious needs of men. 

Preachers need to give serious attention to these criti- 
cisms, not in order to be popular, but in order to reach 
the rank and file of men more effectively with our mes- 
sage. We must talk about things that matter, that make 
a difference, that honestly count in the religious life of 
average men and women. We must make sure we are 
making ourselves understood by simple-minded people. 
We must inwardly and transparently mean what we say 
by our words and our tones. And we must show clear 
contemporary application of the sermons which we 
preach to the lives that are now being lived. "Reality" 
as applied to preaching means that the tones of the 
preacher shall express his real feelings, that the things he 
preaches about shall represent his fresh experience and 
conviction, that the interests to which he appeals are real 
interests of his hearers, that the things he emphasizes as 
important shall be really important. On all of these 
points chaplains tell us that young men are severe judges. 

V. CONCERNING MORAL LIFE AND STANDARDS 

1. The virtues and vices practiced, admired or toler- 
ated by men generally indicate what we have to build 
upon, avoid and overcome in the presentation and de- 
velopment of Christian character. 

In seeking to develop the virtues of courage, generosity, 
unselfishness, persistent cheerfulness, straightforward- 
ness, humility, loyalty, devotion to home, we have the ad- 
vantage of an existing admiration for these qualities. 
The problem is not to create them or the love of them, 
but to bring out their implications more completely and 
show that the natural or military virtues are fulfilled in 
Christ, and that He is indeed the "Lord of All Good 
Life." That men have shown many of these virtues in 
war should not blind us to the fact that the same men are 



144 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

frequently lax in the matter of sexual morality, drink, 
gamble, and lack in a persistent will to serve the com- 
munity for which they have fought. Perhaps the most 
effective way to attack these vices is to indicate their 
conflict with the virtues that men admire. The vices 
most to be feared in ourselves, as being most sure to repel 
men from the cause we represent, are cowardice, close- 
fistedness, gloominess, snobbishness, swelled-headedness, 
hypocrisy. 

2. It is especially important in the presentation of 
Christian character and in our lives as Christians to avoid 
a one-sided ethic — whereby the morality of self-control 
and abstinence overshadozvs the morality of the good 
neighbor. 

We would all agree that in Christianity the law of love 
and neighborliness is primary and characteristic. We 
must not permit men, self-controlled and above reproach 
in matters of personal habits, sex, temperance, language, 
etc., and at the same time, hard, censorious, close, selfish, 
proud in their relations with their fellows, to represent 
the Christian ideal. We must make it clear both in exam- 
ple and precept that Christianity means an active life of 
love and good will and brotherhood. 

3. One of the largest factors in alienating men from 
the Church or in winning them to it is the lives of church 
members. 

It is probably true that it is not so much the Church 
itself that is criticized as members of the Church. "It 
seems to many men, and those the most worth while, 
that the moral standards of church people are too low. 
.... Christians do not strike them as conspicuously 
more kind, more charitable, more loving, and more sacri- 
ficing than other men and women, — particularly more 
sacrificing."^" It has been said of the early Christians 



" B. I. Bell, "The Church and the Civilian Young Man," Atlantic 
Monthly. 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 145 

that they "outlived the pagan," "outdied" him, and "out- 
thought" him. We must "outHve" the majority. That is 
the best evangelism. 

4. The army experience has demonstrated the effec- 
tiveness of vice suppression rather than vice regulation, 
and shown the possibilities when the problem is attacked 
in earnest. 

On the basis of the war experience in successful vice 
suppression the Church has the strongest grounds for co- 
operating vigorously with all who are attacking directly 
and unrelentingly commercial prostitution. The policy of 
the Government in dealing with prostitution, as is well 
known, was not regulation but suppression. "White 
zones" were created around the training camps in this 
country and vigorous measures were taken to secure the 
strict enforcement of the law. In the majority of com- 
munities this was done with marked success. The expe- 
rience of the country during the war has shown the pos- 
sibilities of the suppression of vice when the problem 
is undertaken honestly and energetically. 

On May 7, 1918, General Pershing wrote to Lord 
Milner as follows : "I have heard with great satisfaction 
of the recent decision of the British war office that the 
licensed houses of prostitution are to be put out of 
bounds in the British Expeditionary Force. Many of us 
who have experimented with licensed prostitution or kin- 
dred measures, hoping thereby to minimize the physical 
evils, have been forced to the conclusion that they are 
really ineffective. Abraham Flexner has argued the case 
so convincingly that on the scientific side it seems to me 
there is no escape from the conclusion that what he terms 
'abolition' as distinguished from 'regulation' is the only 
effective mode of combating this age-long evil."^^ With 
such testimony Christians may attack this problem with 
greater assurance. 



" Quoted by Raymond Fosdick, "The Fight Against Venereal Disease," 

The New Republic. 



146 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

5. Any move tozvards the extension of prophylaxis — 
or early preventive treatment, before the development 
of disease — to civilian communities should be examined 
with great care. The Church cannot give its support to 
such a proposal. The emphasis must be upon measures 
to prevent immorality rather than to prevent disease. 

As a result of the great success of prophylaxis in reduc- 
ing venereal disease in the army it has already been sug- 
gested that this method of attack should be extended to 
civilian communities. It is very important for the Church 
to understand what is involved. 

There are at least three distinct medical policies possi- 
ble in attacking venereal disease. 

There is first of all the possibility of giving medical 
prophylaxis in package form to the man who is going to 
the brothel. Very few would now advocate such a policy. 
From a medical standpoint it is dubious because self- 
treatment is liable to be careless. From the moral stand- 
point most would agree that "the sale of indulgences for 
future sins was no worse than the selling or giving of 
prophylaxis beforehand." This was not the practice in 
the American army. 

The policy in the army was that of compulsory early 
preventive treatment after exposure. Even under army 
conditions this practice was far from satisfactory from 
a medical point of view. In spite of the vigilance of 
medical authorities, soldiers were often careless or wholly 
violated the rules. And the moral risks were more 
serious. Its effect may well be coarsening and cynical 
unless the administration is carefully guarded. It must 
be administered in privacy by high-minded men. And 
patients must "be given to understand that prophylaxis 
is not intended to give immunity to fornicators and 
adulterers in their uncleanness, but to protect innocent 
men and women against awful contamination and dis- 
ease. "^^ Any extension of this procedure to civilian com- 

" Chaplain Brent's Report to the Adjutant General of the U. S. A. 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 147 

munities would involve additional difficulties. The army 
was a one-sex community where frequent compulsory 
medical examination was possible. And men were re- 
quired to give full facts as to the source and place of ex- 
posure for use in law enforcement. In civilian communi- 
ties compulsory prophylaxis would of course be out of the 
question. The voluntary cooperation of the patients 
would be necessary. And it would be hardly possible to 
expect prostitutes to report for treatment if the informa- 
tion gained were to be used in law enforcement. A sys- 
tem of compulsory early prophylaxis, to be successful, 
might become a new experiment in the recognition and 
regulation of vice, against which we ought to have turned 
our backs once for all. 

A third policy is the provision of ample clinical facili- 
ties for the treatment of those who develop venereal dis- 
ease, innocently or guiltily. Such a step the Church can 
certainly heartily support. 

The Church needs to recognize clearly that the em- 
phasis must be, not on prophylaxis to prevent disease, but 
upon a program to prevent immorality. The proposal for 
civilian prophylaxis as the important factor in social 
hygiene should be vigorously opposed. The emphasis 
must be placed on the enforcement of laws, sound edu- 
cation, adequate recreation, with provision for the whole- 
some association of the sexes, and, above all, on the moral 
issue involved. ^^ 

6. The renewed evidence of the prevalence of vene- 
real disease demands a reconsideration of the Church's 
attitude towards the marriage of any who cannot secure 
a medical certificate of freedom from venereal disease. 

We believe that the Churches in America should give 
earnest thought to the following conclusion to which the 



1^ For information concerning the modern program of attack upon 
venereal disease through law enforcement, education and adequate recrea- 
tion, consult the American Social Hygiene Association, 105 West 40th Street, 
New York. 



148 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

war experience has led a prominent British chaplain," 
"that the Church of England should take the lead by 
refusing to 'solemnize' syphilitic marriages ;^^ that this is 
no real hardship or injustice on any man ; that a man 
who rates God's blessing through the Church on his mar- 
ried life sufficiently high will consider it well worth the 
inconvenience of troubling to obtain a doctor's certificate 
for a clean bill of health ; that even if he is not pro- 
nounced fit he can avail himself of the means provided 
to effect a cure — a step which otherwise a false and self- 
ish modesty might have prevented him from taking; that 
there can be no blessing of God on a tainted union, for, 
whether or not either of the parties is guiltily responsible 
for the taint, it is one that may affect the children yet 
unborn, and therefore the marriage at that time is not 
such as to win God's approval ; that the Church in so 
insisting would be taking a perfectly reasonable and 
legitimate course in removing the mockery of many 
'Christian marriages' of today ; that a marriage in Church 
is meant to be and should be a sincere act of prayer — by 
people who believe in God — for His blessing on them at 
the time of the most important change of their whole 
lives ; that people to whom these conditions for any rea- 
sons do not apply should only be thankful that the 
Church at last does not allow them to make humbugs of 
themselves, even for an hour, nor a mockery of a religion 
in which they do not believe, and that they should seek 
legal union elsewhere ; finally that it is no wild prophecy 
to say that eventually the State will insist on a clean bill 
of health in those who propose to beget children, and that 
those who love their Church would like to see her take the 
lead in this instead of being compelled years hence to 
adopt a Christian principle from a secular authority for 
purely material reasons. "^^ 

" T. W. Pym, "Papers from Picardy." 

'^^ Gonorrhea as well as syphilis ought no doubt to be included in any 
adequate consideration of the subject. 

" It is worthy of note that a conference of Australian Chaplains on 
May 1 and 2, 1919, adopted, among other resolutions, a recommendation that 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 149 

VI. CONCERNING RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE 
COMMUNITY 

1. The small number of real Christians and active 
Church members and the general ignorance as to what 
Christianity is shows the great need for a renewed effort 
to present Christianity to the unchurched majority in 
an intelligible, appealing, insistent way. 

In an age of propaganda it does not appear that we 
Christians have succeeded in bringing our faith or our 
program before people generally. We have been too 
satisfied with ministering to the religious life of our own 
immediate constituency and have had too little sense of 
responsibility for the whole community. Numerous 
agencies are now succeeding in bringing their principles 
and objectives and appeals to the attention of the general 
public. The public may not fully respond, but they are 
at least aware of a continuous pressure, and know what 
they are rejecting or being indifferent to. The Church 
both in its larger and in its local expressions, should be 
sufficiently devoted and inventive to find means of 
presenting the challenge of Christianity to the semi-Chris- 
tian majority. We have not begun to do our part until 
men generally know what they are rejecting or being 
indifferent to in remaining apart from positive Chris- 
tianity. They must be made to feel the pressure of a 
continuous, intelligent, consecrated propaganda. 

What we are urging is a "missionary" spirit and a 
"missionary" undertaking in the largest sense of the term. 
We need a deeper conviction that we have a Gospel that 
is absolutely indispensable to human life and that we 
cannot be satisfied till we have given our fullest energy 
and best resources of both personality and material means 
to bring that Gospel effectively to the hearts of all. And 
the testimony of the chaplains gives us new assurance 
of the responsiveness of large numbers of men now on 

"a medical certificate of freedom from hereditary disease be required of 
those about to marry." 



150 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

the fringes of organized religion to the fundamental 
Christian truths when presented in a way that really 
shows their practical applicability to daily life. 

2. The experience of fellowship in the army has 
shown the possibility of it and increased the demand 
for it. The Church fails to he more effective in promot- 
ing brotherhood and democratic fellowship in the com- 
munity because of the lack of these qualities in the Church 
itself. 

It has been noted in the first section of this report that 
there is a common criticism of the Church not only be- 
cause it fails to do anything effective to remove social 
injustices and to secure a more Christian social order, 
but also because there is not in the Church itself a spirit 
of genuine brotherhood and democratic fellowship. That 
there is some basis for the criticism cannot be denied. 
The proclamation of a gospel of brotherhood to the 
world is evidently effective in just about the degree to 
which such a way of life prevails in the Church that pro- 
claims it. It is also clear that the experience of fellow- 
ship in the army showed men the possibility of it, gave 
them a "taste" for it, and increased the demand that there 
be more of it in civilian life. 

We heartily agree with our fellow-Christians in Eng- 
land that "the Church ought to be distinguished from the 
world by the type of common life into which her mem- 
bers are drawn, a life of simplicity and self-discipline, of 
practical fellowship and brotherhood, in which the joyous 
and affectionate atmosphere of a Christian family is ex- 
tended to the congregation worshipping at a common 
altar, and beyond that, to the whole body of the Church. 
This must be her challenge to the present social order — 
no mere denunciation of wrong, but the exhibition, in the 
communities of men and women worshipping in her 
churches, of the power of Christianity to establish a new 
earthly relationship reflecting a spiritual unity which 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 151 

transcends all social distinction of class or wealth. 
Through such a divine esprit de corps she will convince 
the world of the presence of Christ in His Church and 
will rebuke by life as well as by word the social injustices 
unworthy of a Christian nation."^^ 

3. The experience of the chaplains and of the Y. M. 
C. A. in practical ministries suggests at least the possi- 
bility of a zvider ministry to the community. The great 
value of a ministry to all the sick, for example, was abun- 
dantly demonstrated. 

Most of the ministers in service undoubtedly gave more 
attention to practical ministry to the felt needs of men — 
physical, social and mental, as well as directly spiritual — 
than they had done in civilian life. The circumstances, 
of course, demanded it, since the ordinary provisions of 
home and school and recreation were not at hand. In 
the personal contacts resulting from this practical minis- 
try many found great opportunities for reaching the 
souls of men most effectively. We do not venture to 
suggest to what extent such practical ministries should 
be continued by the Churches in the various home com- 
munities where conditions are very different from those 
which obtained in the army. We do, however, think it 
needful to ask whether there are not important human 
needs which the churches in some communities may be 
expected to meet and which would afford fine contacts 
for spiritual work with men. 

A particular field in which the chaplains demonstrated 
the great value of their practical ministry in the army 
was the hospital. Here the chaplains devoted themselves, 
not to the sick of their own faith alone, but to all. The 
Churches may well consider the possibility of extending 
such a ministry more widely in civilian communities. 

In the army all the sick of the community were to be 
found in the public wards of central hospitals. That 



" Archbishops' Third Committee of Inquiry. 



152 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

made the systematic ministry to all the sick a much sim- 
pler matter than in civil life. In many cases the men 
were out of reach of any family care or attention, which 
made the ministry of the chaplains especially imperative 
and appreciated, but in spite of these differences it seems 
quite possible that the Churches by cooperative effort 
could bring a practical and spiritual ministry to the sick 
of civilian communities much more widely than is now 
attempted. 

VII. CONCERNING CHURCH UNITY 

One of the outstanding lessons of the zvar is the possi- 
bility of, and the widespread desire for, a greater degree 
of practical unity and cooperation among the Churches. 

An overwhelming majority of the chaplains with whom 
this Committee has come into touch declare that one of 
the impressions made most keenly upon their minds 
is the need for unity in the Churches. The conditions 
under which they worked made practical cooperation on 
their part an imperative necessity. They are convinced 
that a continuation of this cooperative relationship is 
both practicable and needed in a larger degree than has 
obtained in civilian life. They have no ready-made 
scheme for bringing this about, but they do insist that 
the problem must be tackled with more earnestness and 
energy than has yet been given to it. They are convinced 
that in the war we found ourselves possessing more 
practical unity than we had supposed, and that we must 
not let this vision of our unity grow dim. 

1. We have learned in the army how indifferent many 
laymen within the Churches and many earnest men just 
outside are to our denominational differences. 

The personality and approach of the minister is a 
vastly greater factor in his appeal or authority than the 
source of his ordination, as far as most men within or 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 153 

without the Church are concerned. Most laymen are not 
able to see why sacraments as administered in a certain 
way or by a certain order of ministers are more valid 
than the same sacraments otherwise administered. They 
may have preferences as to form, and a certain feeling of 
family pride in the Church they belong to. But the ques- 
tion of validity is not intelligible to many. Similarly our 
credal distinctions are not vital to the majority. That 
a majority should feel this way does not of course prove 
that the majority is right, but it does prove that our 
divisions and exclusions far outrun any living differences 
between our constituencies. 

2. An important factor in promoting fellozvship 
among the chaplains in the army was their frequent con- 
ferences for discussion of their common task. Similar 
conferences among Christian workers from the various 
Churches would be equally desirable in normal times and 
conducive to a spirit of unity. 

The secret of the fellowship among the chaplains dur- 
ing the war was to be found in the common task in which 
they were engaged. The oneness of their work was 
more clear when they were comrades in arms in a single 
army than when they were detached from one another in 
civilian life, each pursuing his own work with very little 
knowledge of what others were undertaking to do. Not 
only in the training schools for chaplains but also in 
many of the large camps, were there frequent confer- 
ences concerning their work and the methods by which 
the task, too large for all of them together, could be most 
efficiently carried out. A parallel to these conferences 
was found among the Churches at home in the General 
War-Time Commission, in which representatives of the 
war commissions of more than a score of bodies came 
together every two weeks during the war to consider 
their common task and to make their plans in consultation 
with one another. 



154 RELIGION AMONG AMERICAN MEN 

We believe that one of the reasons why there is not a 
larger degree of cooperation among the Churches at home 
is because Christians of the various denominational 
bodies do not more often meet together, around the table, 
to share with one another their experiences, to take coun- 
sel together concerning common problems, and to receive 
the inspiration of united undertakings. Can we not learn 
from our experience in the war to lay hold of the benefits 
that can come from more frequent and systematic con- 
ference together ?^^ 

3. Can the Churches show cause before God and pub- 
lic opinion why the cooperation and mutual recognition 
which characterised the ministry in the army is not prac- 
ticable and desirable out of the army? 

In the army we have in the main : 

a. "Allowed men of all denominations to come to our 
communions, taking their desire to communicate as a 
sufficient reason for receiving them." 

b. United freely in common worship, wherein the 
ministers and people of many denominations joined to- 
gether. 

c. Cooperated fully in practical service, in religious 
ministries to the sick, and in the generous sharing of plans 
and assignment of responsibilities. 

Shall we now undertake to prove to the men of our 
own constituencies that the ministrations which they re- 
ceived in faith from ministers of other denominations 
were not only irregular but invalid, that the Christian 
comrades with whom they joined in worship were not 
complete brothers in Christ because they had not received 
valid baptism or confirmation or were not joint inheritors 
of the true faith, that the cooperation of the chaplains 



^^ Cf. the resolution on "Christian Unity" adopted by a group of British 
chaplains at a conference in France, March 12-14, 1919: "In our opinion, 
great and mutual benefits would result from the holding of joint confer- 
ences, conventions and retreats, by members of our several churches as a 
regular and normal part of the life of those churches." 



WHAT THE CHURCH MAY LEARN 155 

in the army is not desirable among churches at home? 
Shall we not rather go forward, in the unity of the Spirit 
of Christ, into an ever increasing cooperation and more 
effective achievement of our common task? 



I! 
li 



